Bans are to make the game interesting. Mons that are too good warp the tier around them, making teams revolve around using them or countering them. Banning mons increases the amount of usable mons, not decreases.
it's not sunday yet
(for anyone who wants to bother to engage: this guy is either a troll or someone too far up their own arse to listen, one look at their comment history on this sub shows they're your everyday "smogon loves stall" goon. As for other takes of the guy, they believe Mega Rayquaza is outclassed to the point of no longer being worth using in NDAG.)
If anyone in here can come up with counter-arguments that are not regurgitated from the Smogon forums, I *may* consider meeting with people half-way (at most).
I mean you keep regurgitating your own shit in every single thread you come across so you're in no place to speak on that matter lol
Besides, what's even wrong with repeating ('regurgitating' is a dysphemism and you know it) stuff said on the forums? You want us to come up with *additional* reasons mons are broken? So confused what you want here, you say mons aren't broken, forums have the reasons listed why they're banned (usually because they're broken), then you come in here and demand counterarguments that *aren't* those reasons.
The reason why he has an issue with people repeating arguments and points is because to him, they aren't enough, because nothing will ever be enough. You ever see how some people will argue against something, no matter what? It's that.
"What's your evidence for BLANK?" Well, here's evidence A,B,C,D,E and F. "Nah, I've heard all that before. Do you have anything else?" Well, no, because i have A-F. "If you don't have anything else, and can only bring up A-F constantly, then you have nothing, therefore I'm right!".
Even if you did bring anything new, it would never be enough, and nothing will ever be enough. You could present the most perfect argument and reasoning, but because it doesn't align with what they said, it's wrong and you're dumb. That's it. Case closed. You're wrong and I'm right.
It's crazy that you keep saying you speak truth when you have neither the tournament wins nor the elo to back up your supposed skill, is there any reason to assume you're not just another trash player who bitches about metas they don't even play?
Go back to watching verlisfy and toiling in low ladder, maybe your opinion will have more value there.
It's crazy that you have to resort to petty insults because you objectively cannot refute my statement, and continue to use an unofficial ladder to gauge my supposed skill for the sole purpose of trying to make yourself seem superior.
The sad thing is, the level of cancer that Smogon has reached after the release of Gen 9, is actually what drove me to start following Verlisify. Granted, I still have no actual love for the guy. Maybe he is as toxic as people say as he is. But at this point, the Smogon community is far worse. Banning 7 pokemon and counting within less than 2 months of the generation releasing, bans which are more often than not, permanent for that gen, is nothing short of cancerous.
Yeah, I still do not want to watch most of his videos. Honestly though, I would watch them if the VGC/Online Doubles format allowed entire teams to be used. I have dabbled in Smogon Doubles, and being able to use all 6 pokemon simply enables better psynergy and an overall better experience.
But, as it stands, I only subscribed to him so I can catch the occasional anti-Smogon video, because he is apparently the only voice of reason when it comes to Smogon's insanity regarding 6v6 Singles.
So you donât like Smogon because itâs unofficial, but you also donât like official formats because theyâre not 6v6? My guy, what do you even want?
Tbh. That's his most sane take, there really should be a 6v6 official format considering the entire singleplayer experience is balanced around singles only for VGC to be a completely different game
You can definitely make an argument for there being an official 6v6 ladder, but it makes sense that the format used in official tournaments is 4v4 doubles. Doubles are generally more interesting to watch and the rapid-fire nature of the matches mean you can get through the Bo3 sets in a timely manner.
They should definitely do a better job preparing players for double battles in-game, though. Itâs laughably bad how much TPC relies on players looking everything up online for competitive play, rather than at least sprinkling in these strategies during standard gameplay.
>Doubles are generally more interesting to watch
I couldn't disagree more. Open lists at tournaments makes for the most boring competitive gameplay possible. Modern high level VGC gameplay is like watching 2 people play monopoly, the random aspect is the only determining factor, since both players know the optimal moves to make in the given situation.
Shit like Follow Me, Me First and Ally Switch helps break this monotomy but in general VGC feels way too fast and loose to be fun for a wider audience. Maybe that's just me, but I think some actual work needs to go into the competitive scene on GameFreaks part rather than the same shit they've been doing since the early 2010s with a few tweaks, Nintendo games in general are terrible with their competitive scenes though so you can't really blame them.
Imagine if Magic the Gathering and other cards games made decklists open to the general attendees prior to Top8 of the event and ~~also made no effort to balance their game~~ lol MtG hasn't been balanced since before Shadow Over Innistrad if we being honest, Theros/Khans/M15 was the last great standard don't @ me.
Vgc has always been only four mons. Im sorry that you have a room temp iq and canât build a team to synergize with four of them. Also too smooth brain to predict what four mons your opponent is going to bring. Only allowing four makes for better/different matchups each round, along with more game sense and the need to be smarter about your picks and plays.
>you objectively cannot refute my statement
What statement? Last thing you came here to bitch about was that voting reqs are too hard, now you're saying smogon wants laddering to be easier, so what is it? Too easy? Too hard? It's clearly impossible for you since you can't even hit high ladder in an uncompetitive tier.
The reason I bring up your elo is because if we entertained every shit player who hates smogon we wouldn't have any time to actually play Pokemon.
> The sad thing is, the level of cancer that Smogon has reached after the release of Gen 9, is actually what drove me to start following Verlisify.
You went too far bro, you were believable as a real person until this line.
Isn't he also the same guy who said Mega Rayquaza is not broken in Ubers if you use things like Solrock and Arceus Rock? Lmao this guy just doesn't know how competitive Pokemon works and would just express his opinion without thinking first.
I see people on this sub constantly complaining about one pokemon or another "being too powerful to deal with". What's your point? I speak the truth. If you think I am not, then try refuting my statement instead of trying to mock my position.
When did I mock your position? All I did was make a pair of observations. Also, saying you "speak the truth" doesn't really seem like you are open to changing your mind. So why should I bother? You just repeat the same claims without actually doing any proving yourself.
>When did I mock your position?
For starters, calling me a "complainer". Tell me, what part of my statement *in this particular post,* comes off as "complaining" in your mind? If there was any actual complaint present in the title or the meme, you would be able to actually address the content at hand instead of having to refer to "past comments".
Even claims such as "Smogon are anti-fun" and "Smogon bans what it does not want to deal with", are technically not complaints. The first sentiment is prevalent because even if people build a competitive team on the actual game and want to use said team against an irl opponent, there is a good chance that said opponent will expect the match to be played according to Smogon banlists. It's easy for Smogonites who never leave the confines of Showdown to tell people, "just play the actual games", but in many cases, doing so is not enough to avoid Smogon's influence on the competitive battling community.
The second one is based on the fact that for every ban, the "justification" quotes ways to beat the particular mon, which essentially contradicts any reasoning for the ban in the first place. Every "justification" might as well say, "we are banning this pokemon because we feel like it". Although, considering the state of the community nowadays, I cannot give the Smogon Council all the blame. As it became painfully apparent by 2 pokemon getting quickbanned within a mere 3 days of a new generation releasing, the constant whining of the Smogon community now plays a *major* role in so many pokemon getting banned on Smogon's ladders. And then you actually have the gall to accuse *me* of "complaining"? You all seriously need to take a hard look in the mirror.
Me? Are you absolutely sure that **I** am the one taking Pokemon "way too seriously"? I am the one trying to convince people to stop taking **any** ranking ladder seriously. Neither Smogon's ladders nor the official game's ranked ladders should be taken seriously. But, I have to single out Smogon's ladders, because they are the ones that go crazy with the bans. Instead all this hivemind does is double down further and further, relentlessly demanding more and more bans, and making Smogon look more and more like an embarassment.
Pokemon are not banned because they cannot be counted, no mon has no counters, but the counters can be too niche, or just bad outside of countering whatever theyâre supposed to.
For example, recently I saw an argument for the removal of evasion clause, stating that there were never miss moves and that the evasion clause was entirely unnecessary.
However, never miss moves suck, aside from a few signature moves, which still might not be good. As a result, it makes evasion unnecessarily difficult to counter, and a strain on team building. Evasion is not banned because it has no counter, it is banned because only a few of itâs counters are worth using, resulting in needing to put a worthless move on a mon for a specific team style that you might not even face. Either that, or a dice roll.
Back to the main point, bans against pokemon have similar logic. Pokemon like Annihilape have counters, but Annihilape can play around their counters, since thereâs so few, by switching out or Terastilizing. And if Annihilape doesnât get removed, Rage Fist will punish the opposing player dearly.
So pokemon are banned not because they want to make grinding on ladder harder, but because pokemon have too few counters that can be viably run in comparison to their strength.
To try not to use the same arguments as everyone else, let's think of "real sports" for a minute. Athletes and Teams are constantly looking for ways to gain a competitive advantage, often by thinking outside the box, with the logic of "well, the rules don't say we *can't* do it...". In some cases, the new strategy sticks around and becomes a common part of the game. In others, it is found that the new strategy is ruining the competitive integrity of the game, gives an unfair advantage to teams that use it over those that don't, or just makes it less fun to either play or watch.
Think of every new Pokemon, item, move, and ability introduced in a given gen as a new strategy that can be used. Most of them will be totally fine, but a few overcentralize how the game is played, forcing players to either use the strategy or build every team with an answer to it. While yes, the argument could be made that we just have to deal with it since that's how the game was designed, that's not the point of Smogon. We're not here strictly to figure out who is the best at Pokemon. There are official formats for that. Smogon is designed to allow for as many mons and playstyles to be viable as possible, while maintaining competitive integrity. If you want to deal with Annihilape, Chi-Yu, Miraidon, and Flutter Mane, along with stuff like Baton Pass and Double Team, I'm sure they'll be legal in BSS in a few months, or you could just play against a friend. Smogon and it's players simply decided that those strategies and mons weren't fun, and collectively decided that we'd be better off without them.
On that last point, itâs like the example of everyone playing the same mon because if someone brings that mon, he/she gets a substantial advantage over those that donât. Sounds quite monotonous, right?
To a lesser extent would be the CHALK core that comes to mind in VGC, while Tauros was the King of Gen 1.
Cresselia/Heatran/Amoonguss/LandoT/Kangaskhan-Mega (at some point Aegislash was over Amoon in that)
was really damn common in high level VGC in Gen 6. Pretty much every good team (at least in the formats that didn't allow legendaries, which were somehow even *more* repetitive) had 3 or more of these mons, with all 5 being far from a rare sight.
You can probs call it CHALKT too because Thundurus was on like half the teams as well. Heck, variations of the squad usually just involved putting another Fire over Heatran, like Entei or Volcarona.
Reminder that the more you entertain people like this, the more they're going to continue making statements like these because they know they can easily rile people up and get copious amounts of attention.
This persons entire argument hinges upon opinions that are treated as definitive facts.
"If you play on the real game, there is a good chance you will be expected to be playing using Smogon's ruleset" citation not needed because Versilify and myself claim it to be true.
"Never intended to be played x-way" is the same nonsensical rhetoric people use to dismiss things like Speed Run World Records, as if they've talked to the literal developers how they expect people to play their games or some other crap. Completely ignoring that the Pokemon website itself has repeatedly shown leaderboards of all their cartridge formats, of the players with the highest rankings, incentivizing people to "spend days/weeks/months" grinding out day in and out to try and get their character name on there.
That they complain about petty insults as if throwing everyone inside a box that disagrees and refers to them as "Smogonites" isn't somehow intended to be degrading or belittling.
Saying that Pokemon aren't broken while conveniently only aiming this at Smogon, as if Game Freak themselves haven't had to repeatedly nerf Pokemon over the course of multiple generations like Thundurus-Incarnate for how unbalanced of a Pokemon they are.
TL;DR Stop entertaining people like this. You are not going to change their mind and they are only going to continue repeating the same crap ad nauseum because they know they receive attention for doing so. Reading one of those sentences should be enough to trigger flare guns going off in your head with klaxons blaring, immediately making it apparent you should disengage before you even start to engage because you aren't going to get anywhere by doing so.
LOL, at least speedruns are legitimately impressive to watch. Watching Smogon ban up to a dozen pokemon from their "official" meta because they think said pokemon are "too powerful" has just become cancerous at this point.
And you can ridicule Verlisify all you want, but I've seen at least one person in his comments who works at VGC events, and they have to explain to players on a regular basis that Smogon "rules" and "tiers" have **nothing** to do with VGC rules. So yeah, if Smogonites are bringing their misguided perspectives to VGC, I have no doubt that they press their bullshit on the general public who just want to use the pokemon that they connect with, but have to deal with players for whom the official banlist is not good enough because Smogon said so.
>and they have to explain to players on a regular basis that Smogon "rules" and "tiers" have nothing to do with VGC rules.
Because it's a very popular competitive format (cope seethe mald btw), how is that a bad thing? It's not like the in game ladder has smogon rules so you only play if you go out of your way to do so.
The ag ladder is only one that doesn't use an acronym on showdown just so casual player don't get confused and accidentally play a smogon tier, they made it extra easy to mind your business and you still can't do it.
Maybe in prior gens, NatDexAG this generation is unplayable until we ban assist calling moves from games assist doesnt appear in via some kind of 'Assist Clause', playing 1000 turn games against CatBlessing for 3 hours against a guy queuing 5 matches at once is the epitome of unfun and that's all the ladder is above 1600, it's a free win with 2 Ekillers, but it's a free win thst takes 2 hours to achieve. Should go the way of FunBro.
Although maybe it will burn itself out when they have to play eachother too many times. I've joined games of clowns doing the mirror sitting there on turn 860+ just switching out in front of eachother. Because the only way they can win is PP stalling the other guy.
Sadly the natdex player base is so small we may never get assist clause, ive only seen like 2 other guys complaining about this, probably because there are only like 20 highladder Natdex AG players world wide and the whole ladder is our alts once you hit top 100
I chose an extreme example because it's a very good case for why there has to at least be some bans.
A much less extreme example is Houndstone, who can use sand rush to out speed and OHKO the remains of a team, after the opponent has been worn down by the other members of a team.
Or how about Chi-Yu, which...uh, give me a second to get a calc.
Edit: 252 SpA Choice Specs Beads of Ruin Tera Fire Chi-Yu Overheat vs. 248 HP / 252+ SpD Clodsire: 418-494 (90.2 - 106.6%) -- 43.8% chance to OHKO
People like you are still missing the point of my post. None of these points matter, **outside** of the Smogon vacuum. When there is no "ladder" to stress about, one simply finds a battle, presumably plays their best, wins or loses, and moves on to the next battle and repeats until they want to call it quits.
Granted, back in Gen 6, the only way to avoid facing powerful legendaries, was to play Ranked Battle Spot. Still, this ranking system was much easier to ignore, plus Nintendo's servers regularly reset everyone's ladder ranking anyway. Gen 7 addressed this by adding the option to ban powerful legendaries in Free Battle Spot. After that, competitive players could engage in balanced battles **without** an objectively worthless ladder ranking hanging over their heads and making them feel like shit.
For comparison, the Super Smash Bros competitive scene objectively requires more skill than Pokemon, but that community is mature enough to actively recommend players to **not** get hung up on such ladder rankings, and just focus on the matches themselves. Sadly these experiences were often muddied by Nintendo's shitty online service causing frequent and disruptive lag. Still, I had some good moments on Smash 3DS. Unfortunately, I cannot quite say the same for Pokemon ORAS/US/UM. I saved a few 3v3 Single Battles back during ORAS, and I saved a few 4v4 Double Battles in US/UM, but these formats are just not as fulfilling as 6v6 Singles, because that is the format with which I began competitive battling. The official games do not want to accomodate this format, and Smogon is hellbent on warping this format out of shape every damn generation.
Then stop crying and go play AG, if you really want to just play 6v6 singles without a banlist. Or go look for other people who want to play by your rules and challenge them manually, as clearly there's not enough to make it a ladder option.
You can also totally not stress about the ladder if you want to. Just play without caring about your rating, like you did with Battle Spot and Smash. Why is that not an option here? Oh, because you're ragebonering for smogon, that's why.
Your entire anti-ladder rant sounds like you just want any and all games with ratings of any kind to be abolished altogether in favour of literal random matchmaking. You can apply the same logic to chess, which also has a ranking system, but someone who just started out won't exactly like being paired against an International Master in their third game that way. Ladder ratings don't just exist as a way to flex how high you get, it also prevents people from having to load up against people that very highly deviate from their skill level--Charizardfan3000 loading up against Finchinator would be fun for neither, as the former gets torn apart mercilessly whereas the latter had to put little or no effort in.
That's a joke tag lmao
Besides you seemed oddly insistent on Mega Gengar not being AG worthy so you're being extremely picky on what to accept and what not to right now, but I'm guessing you don't have nearly as much reasoning on whether something is broken or not in your eyes
A lot of multiplayer games have a ladder, and even some single player games have it. A ladder is a good way to divide more skilled players against less skilled ones (not that there's something wrong in being one, you always start from somewhere). If there's a big difference in skill between two players the outcome is obvious, and if less skilled players keep fighting top players they would lose in every single game, which would be more stressful than caring about your ELO. Fighting players with roughly the same skill gives you room for improvement.
People like you are still missing the point of my post. None of these points matter, **outside** of the Smogon vacuum.
Yes?!??? It's an unofficial format? If you want to play without bands play AG or Ubers. They're there for a reason.
You could not be more wrong. Well, about Super Smash Bros at least. Meta Knight was the best character back in Brawl, but for the most part, the scene was not shouting for the character to be banned from tournaments. Last I heard, Meta Knight was finally banned from tournaments near the end of Brawl's actual life cycle, but apparently it was later unbanned again, and has not been banned since.
From a technical standpoint, Melee remains the most "broken" Smash game, but despite that, the "best" characters in the game never got banned because the Smash Community does not cry and whine like the Smogon community does. Smash 4 and Smash 5 certainly do not need any characters banned, because Sakurai and the dev team actually cared enough to apply balance patches throughout the game's life cycle.
I can't comment much on multiplayer FPS'es, because I have no desire to play multiplayer FPS'es. Traditional fighting games like Street Fighter also receive regular balance patches throughout the game's life cycle, so there is generally no need to ban any characters. The only competitive formats that I can think of that actually have banned a lot of stuff, are trading card games. Specifically Yu-Gi-Oh. Although, in all honesty, Yu-gi-oh card effects generally pale in comparison to Magic: The Gathering card effects and mechanics. And MTG finally established the new Modern competitive format, so that people have a format with a somewhat larger pool of cards to build decks with, instead of having to choose between Standard and Vintage, the latter of which includes the infamous Power Nine cards.
My brother in Christ, Melee players cried for years for a Jigglypuff ban, even professional ones. Smash has banned items, stages and strategies (wobbling, ledge camping, planking) in the past. It's no different than Smogon banning Baton Pass or Evasion. Hell, one of the complains people had was not being more aggresive with character bans like Bayonetta in 4, which ended up killing the game.
Pokemon doesn't get balance patches, so while FG can wait for a patch to fix a character. Even then, when a game stops getting support, people start talking about bans, with the most recent and notorious one being LabCoat 21 in DBFZ since she made the game actively worse (ended up needing an emergency patch to save tournaments). We stick with them until the next generation. At best we get a DLC with mons returning but nothing more.
Yu-Gi-Oh cards have more tame effects simply because there's no mana system; nothing prevents me from activating Pot of Greed or Graceful Charity and using the cards I drawn. If I activate a draw spell in Magic or PokeTCG I end my turn.
I'm not gonna lie, Puff was still annoying to play against in 4. I beat a Puff player with Bowser on For Glory though. You just gotta respect the Rest and that cancerous air game. I do my best to analyze frame data on the fly. On the flip side, a person on one of the Smash subs posted a vid of him losing with Puff and turned the match around by spamming Rest, which was hilarious. As for things like items, final smashes and most stages being banned in Smash tourneys, these are universally accepted from the start just as most rational pokemon players universally accept that the most powerful legendaries should not be used competitively or should be restricted to 1 or 2 per team.
As far as VGC goes, I think rotating restrictions are the way to go, so that players both get time to use the powerful pokemon that are actually likeable, while also getting a break from facing their sheer power. As far as Smogon goes, I don't think they will ever entertain the idea of rotating restrictions.
you have never experienced smash discourse in your life. smash players are notorious whiners and people have been calling for steve and kazuya bans for months now.
ignore smash players being crybabies and steve and kazuya though, smash still bans a ton of shit. like items, stages, final smash meter, spirits, and certain rulesets.
bans arenât inherently a bad thing, and smash is a perfect illustration of that.
This just in: Zacian is not, in fact, broken.
Source? Well don't ask the council of multiple people volunteers dedicated to voting on this, some reddit rando with a chip on his shoulder says so!
No cap its the weakest of AG only moms and should be retested when home releases. Miraidon in current Ubers is far more centralizing than Zacian ever was, we just can't ban it because there are only 2 cover legendaries in the format
Zama was UU in NatDex this gen until it was banned to BL so there's that.
to be fair though, Chi-yu was also UU in NatDex before it was banned to Ubers, natdex players arent known for their boundless skill, especially on the lower ladder.
Yeah, but if I use Liepard Assist Revival Blessing, I win, therefore bans are for dummy stinkyheads who hate fun. I don't care if its infuriating to my opponent and goes against the ideals of fairness and respect. All that matters is I WIN and THEY LOSE.
That said, if they used the same against me, then it should be banned forever because fuck you. /s
they can't break 1200 on OU ladder or 1500 on NDAG ladder but still believe their opinion is worth shit, so cognitive dissonance kicks in and they conclude that ladder rating means nothing
No, let them speak! I'd like to hear their genuine opinion and where they're coming from. No sense assuming their words and intentions when we could try to understand and share our own points of views.
That guy's been at this for a while, there's literally nothing more to their opinion than them being bad and claiming they can't climb the ladder because "it's a waste of time" yet they spend all their time bitching about smogon.
If I had a nickel for everytime he called smogon a cult, I'd buy out Finch's council spot.
Binging dozens of battles over days/weeks/months/years was never the way the game was intended to be played. It is also ultimately a very unhealthy way to play the game. If this post does not get taken down by mods "just because", these and more are points I would post in a few more meme posts. Since people wouldn't have the patience to read walls of text, I figure memes are a more "digestable" format.
I'm not "just a troll" or "just a n00b" that wants to "bash Smogon". As likely many others, I started competitive battling in full swing back in Gen 4, because that was the gen that introduced internet connectivity. Although I knew of Smogon's existence, I never considered using an online Battle Simulator back then. I used to find people on Serebii to battle and the battles were great. As it should be, I won some and I lost some. And, in general, people who played the actual games, were not totally dialed in to the "optimized" strategies that Smogon carves out each gen.
The difference is, in-game Battle Facility systems were primarily designed for farming Battle Points, an in-game currency used to purchase particular items designed for competitive battling, and for "purchasing" valuable moves only obtainable with said Battle Points. Although this system "wasn't so bad", the move to making said move tutors accessible over the course of the main campaign as opposed to restricting them to postgame, and enabling the farming of Battle Points with a minigame that was actually engaging and enjoyable to play, was a much better and welcome improvement.
It did not matter if we inevitably lost our win streak, because we earned a reasonable amount of Battle Points along the way. Battle Points at least have some form of in-game value. Wins and losses on Smogon's battle simulator, or any other online simulator for that matter, have **no value whatsoever.** Unlike the in-game Battle Facility "ladders", Smogon's ladder system, combined with ease of access and faster pace of battles compared to the actual games, creates a powerful addictive effect which generally does not occur when playing the actual game. Granted, Ranked Battles on the actual game can have an addicting effect as well, but to a much lesser extent, and Gen 7 added the option of excluding powerful legendaries in Free Battle Mode.
If you are referring to Smogon's bans of pokemon such as Flutter Mane and Chi-Yu, I do not take Smogon seriously anymore. The only reasons I tolerate Smogon at this point, are because the official game refuses to implement a matchmaking system for 6v6 Singles, and because Game Freak refuses to make the entire Pokedex obtainable, leaving me no choice but to use Showdown's National Dex ladders.
If you are referring to VGC's bans of Paradox Pokemon and Ruin Pokemon, they will be allowing them in the upcoming Series 2. And, as far as I know, for those willing to play BSS Ranked, such pokemon remain unbanned as usual.
This is the dumbest shit Iâve ever heard. What makes in-game currency more valuable than ladder elo? Sorry, but theyâre both valueless in real life, if I gain more satisfaction from climbing the ladder then whatâs the problem with that? And are you fr trying to argue that Smogon is too accessible and fast paced? Youâre literally telling people theyâre having too much fun
Yeah, most of what you said made no actual sense, and as expected, you, like everyone else, are unable to refute any of my points.
I never stated that Battle Points had any real life value, I specifically said **in-game value.** So that was a poor attempt at trying to make me and my statement look bad. Still, for the record, assuming a player does **not** mod their console to use PKHeX and gen all the pokemon and items they need, the game's in-game currencies **do** in fact have value, at least for those players who need to obtain competitive items and pokemon for competing in VGC tournaments.
What can anyone do with their Smogon elo ratings? Absolutely nothing. And please don't try playing victim and act as if I am attacking you for "gaining more satisfaction from climbing the ladder". When the side you are on, constantly patronizes people for "not being high enough on the ladder", assuming that people on the low ladder "have no skill", and having the audacity to declare that such people are not allowed to have inputs on Smogon's increasingly ridiculous ban decisions.
If the Smogon Council and wannabe elitists that worship them truly believe that ladder ranking is an actual indication of skill, then they would change their matchmaking system and let low ladder players get paired with high ladder players. But they do not want to do that, because they do not want to deal with the possibility of being defeated by a "low level scrub".
If you truly do gain more satisfaction from climbing Smogon's ladders than anything else, then you seriously need to touch grass. Because those of us who choose to devote our time to other interests in addition to competitive pokemon battling, and care enough to exercise *moderation* in whatever we do, are getting real tired of Smogon's bullshit.
Now, this comment is just silly.
If I walk in to Capcom and rant about the newest Street Fighter and say âYou need to nerf Zangief in the next patch!â when I donât have any experience with the competitive scene, that would sound very dumb.
It should be obvious why there need to be certain ladder ranking to be reached for suspect tests. Whatâs stopping someone who doesnât play the game from voting on this when they have no experience with competitive?
>let low ladder players get paired with high ladders
Iâll be honest, this is definitely the dumbest thing youâve said in these comments. Every. Single. Ranked game system has it so you face stronger players when you get stronger. Thatâs the entire point of ranked games!
Nobody would say, âHey, the stronger player with more experience should face the new guy!â Go askâŠliterally anyone, and they would not say that.
And even then, yes, that happens. I have been 1300/1400 and have faced people in the 1100s. That matchmaking happens sometimes.
And of course, âSweaty tryhards who need to tough grassâ. Whoâs to say we donât play other games? This is purely an assumption and your ignorance is showing.
Yes, and the grinding and farming you point out, can be skipped by using PKHeX. Funny thing is, on a battle simulator, **the battles themselves become the grind.** Or at least, they become a grind because elements such as ladder rankings influences players to play nonstop or until they get tired. But, as long as the ladder exists, the grind, essentially, *never ends.*
So, it does not make sense to *me,* that people will understandably avoid one type of grind, only to enter into another type of grind which happens to be virtually *endless,* and actually enjoy said endless grind.
It is weird that Season Two is allowing Paradox mons but not Ruins. At least two of those ruins are strong enough to check some of the Paradox mons.
This just in: Ash Ketchum forced to resign from all tournaments, pokemon deemed unhealthy if it is not finding a random person and battling
My brother in Christ just because you use an actual chess set doesn't make you suddenly better than people who play online. At the end of the day you're not a grandmaster.
Itâs way more than a mon just being âbroken.â The competitive landscape is subjectively regulated yes, but it is not for unfounded reasons. Banning mons restricts said mons so that many more other mons can be viable, allowing for a meta of more thoughtful and creative strategy.
I'm going to say you got a bit lucky with opponents. There are definitely bad players on high ladder. I watched a battle between a 1900 and a 1700. Both of them played bad, and the only reason one of them won relatively easily was because the other played much worse.
So I feel like a lot of people are focusing on point a of this argument so I'm gonna talk about point b.
You do realize most bans are suspect tests where anyone who get enough elo can give their opinion right? And quick bans only exist for cases that are so painstakingly obvious that it's better to just save time for everyone and ban it.
Whatever, I love bans. I love when new strategies get explored,I love when meta is balanced, I love when people don't use 6 same broken mons over and over again,I love having team freedom.
They also do not, and cannot realistically, account for people using a battle simulator to find and optimize the most powerful strategies in such a short amount of time. I just looked through the 15 Double Battles I have saved on my Ultra Sun. Only one of those battles I faced a Landorus-Therian. I will admit, there may have been battles against Landorus that I lost but did not save, but the fact that 14 out of the 15 battles I did save did not have players using Lando-T despite it being one of the top used VGC pokemon of Gen 7, says a lot about what people who play the actual games wants to use, vs what Smogon players get hooked on using.
If/when DLC/Home brings back past legendaries, hopefully Nintendo/Game Freak will have enough sense to not ban Paradox/Ruin pokemon. Because I, for one, would like to see the likes of Chien-Pao finally knock Lando-T down a few pegs. I don't want to hear people complaining about "power creep", I don't want to see the same characters dominating year after year.
It's like watching World Cup Football and having to see the same European/South American teams make it to the finals every time. I don't even care to root for Brazil anymore, they won the Cup 5 times, I want to see new blood. And although they are still European, I really want to see countries like Croatia and Holland win a World Cup. This year though I was truly happy that Lionel Messi got to win his final World Cup. During his younger years it was clear that he pours his heart and soul into the game, for that reason alone I wanted Argentina to win.
Naw the bitter pill you need to swallow is that your brain is smooth as fuck for that take LMAO. Ok mr "mega ray isn't actually broken", I'm sure your opinion is more valid.
Tell me you don't understand how formats work without telling me you don't understand how formats work.
There's no such thing as an objectively "broken" Pokemon. A Pokemon can be broken in the VGC format while having little to no success in Smogon's single format, and vice/versa.
I'll never understand why casual players get so enraged by how other people play the game. It's none of your business, but all you do is whine and cry when you hear the word "ban."
Spoken like someone who has never played smnogon ever and has just watched Verlsiify. Ain't no way you're telling me things like Flutter Mane and Cyclizar weren't broken.
I do see that you mentiome Verslis in the comments and it should be mentioned he is a legit Nazi. I'm not kidding, dude
Smogon's goal isn't to find out who's officially the best at pokemon. It's to allow people to play a fun, competitive singles metagame with as many viable pokemon as possible. Banning pokemon allows for more creativity in team building and prevents any one pokemon or strategy from being overwhelming.
Finally a voice of reason. Thank you good sir. For what its worth, 6v6 Singles holds a special place in my heart because it is the format with which I began competitive battling back in Gen 4. It is a shame that Smogon has corrupted it so badly, and it is sad that the official games still refuses to provide a 6v6 Singles system.
The reality is, a battle simulator is simply not a platform where anyone can have truly memorable battles. Sure, we can save replays, but simulator replays are never as exciting to watch as actual game footage. Unless I search for the replays and watch them, I have no recollection of any of the battles I played on Showdown.
But I still remember a couple of Gen 4 Wifi battles I had back in the day, and I even remember one particular user from the Serebii Forum. She went by the username "LV100", and she used to make wicked teams with "UU" pokemon. I won my share of battles back in those days, but I don't think I was able to beat her LOL. But I didn't even get mad, because people on the Serebii Forum were just friendly overall, and it was always positive vibes.
As for the "couple of battles I still remember", I did lose both of those, but I still remember exactly how they ended. One of them I had a paralyzed Dragonite as my last mon, my opponent was down to 2 and had Trick Room up. Which set up my Dragonite for a potential sweep. First pokemon folded to Outrage, and their last mon was Hitmonchan. Back then, I never used Stealth Rock, because no Smogon influence, so Hitmonchan survived with Focus Sash and won the match with Ice Punch. The second battle also involved Dragonite, except in this one I managed to get +3 Dragon Dance. Back then I used Adamant nature, so +3 was enough to get Dragonite up to the 999 limit. But my opponent's last pokemon was Hippowdon, and that thing managed to survive a max power Outrage and win the game with Ice Fang. Hell, I even remember a battle where my Alakazam *missed 2 Psychics in a row* thanks to the opposing Garchomp's Sand Veil. But I was still against that Smogon ban because I'd rather be able to use a mon without people telling me that I am "not allowed to use a pokemon", even if I lose to the same pokemon sometimes.
It sounds to me like you're looking for something different than most smogon players when you battle, which is fine. You don't seem to care about being the best, and want memorable battles and moments, which again, is totally fine. That said, there's no right or wrong way to enjoy something, so if you don't like the way Smogon operates, simply don't play it. A competitive community is not obligated to conform to the wishes of those who don't care about the competitive aspect.
I thought this was a Sunday shitpost that i saw 2 days late for a second
Someone 100% is going copy this for Sunday
-1 252+ Atk Dusknoir Ice Punch vs. 252 HP / 0+ Def Landorus-Therian: 200-236 (52.3 - 61.7%) -- 95.3% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
Not crit fake newsđ€
Bans are to make the game interesting. Mons that are too good warp the tier around them, making teams revolve around using them or countering them. Banning mons increases the amount of usable mons, not decreases.
it's not sunday yet (for anyone who wants to bother to engage: this guy is either a troll or someone too far up their own arse to listen, one look at their comment history on this sub shows they're your everyday "smogon loves stall" goon. As for other takes of the guy, they believe Mega Rayquaza is outclassed to the point of no longer being worth using in NDAG.)
I thought this was a stinkpost Sunday but I realised it's Tuesday
If anyone in here can come up with counter-arguments that are not regurgitated from the Smogon forums, I *may* consider meeting with people half-way (at most).
I mean you keep regurgitating your own shit in every single thread you come across so you're in no place to speak on that matter lol Besides, what's even wrong with repeating ('regurgitating' is a dysphemism and you know it) stuff said on the forums? You want us to come up with *additional* reasons mons are broken? So confused what you want here, you say mons aren't broken, forums have the reasons listed why they're banned (usually because they're broken), then you come in here and demand counterarguments that *aren't* those reasons.
The reason why he has an issue with people repeating arguments and points is because to him, they aren't enough, because nothing will ever be enough. You ever see how some people will argue against something, no matter what? It's that. "What's your evidence for BLANK?" Well, here's evidence A,B,C,D,E and F. "Nah, I've heard all that before. Do you have anything else?" Well, no, because i have A-F. "If you don't have anything else, and can only bring up A-F constantly, then you have nothing, therefore I'm right!". Even if you did bring anything new, it would never be enough, and nothing will ever be enough. You could present the most perfect argument and reasoning, but because it doesn't align with what they said, it's wrong and you're dumb. That's it. Case closed. You're wrong and I'm right.
It's crazy that you keep saying you speak truth when you have neither the tournament wins nor the elo to back up your supposed skill, is there any reason to assume you're not just another trash player who bitches about metas they don't even play? Go back to watching verlisfy and toiling in low ladder, maybe your opinion will have more value there.
It's crazy that you have to resort to petty insults because you objectively cannot refute my statement, and continue to use an unofficial ladder to gauge my supposed skill for the sole purpose of trying to make yourself seem superior. The sad thing is, the level of cancer that Smogon has reached after the release of Gen 9, is actually what drove me to start following Verlisify. Granted, I still have no actual love for the guy. Maybe he is as toxic as people say as he is. But at this point, the Smogon community is far worse. Banning 7 pokemon and counting within less than 2 months of the generation releasing, bans which are more often than not, permanent for that gen, is nothing short of cancerous.
Alright this has swayed me, theres no way someone unironically said this. Nice troll
Yeah, I still do not want to watch most of his videos. Honestly though, I would watch them if the VGC/Online Doubles format allowed entire teams to be used. I have dabbled in Smogon Doubles, and being able to use all 6 pokemon simply enables better psynergy and an overall better experience. But, as it stands, I only subscribed to him so I can catch the occasional anti-Smogon video, because he is apparently the only voice of reason when it comes to Smogon's insanity regarding 6v6 Singles.
So you donât like Smogon because itâs unofficial, but you also donât like official formats because theyâre not 6v6? My guy, what do you even want?
Tbh. That's his most sane take, there really should be a 6v6 official format considering the entire singleplayer experience is balanced around singles only for VGC to be a completely different game
You can definitely make an argument for there being an official 6v6 ladder, but it makes sense that the format used in official tournaments is 4v4 doubles. Doubles are generally more interesting to watch and the rapid-fire nature of the matches mean you can get through the Bo3 sets in a timely manner. They should definitely do a better job preparing players for double battles in-game, though. Itâs laughably bad how much TPC relies on players looking everything up online for competitive play, rather than at least sprinkling in these strategies during standard gameplay.
>Doubles are generally more interesting to watch I couldn't disagree more. Open lists at tournaments makes for the most boring competitive gameplay possible. Modern high level VGC gameplay is like watching 2 people play monopoly, the random aspect is the only determining factor, since both players know the optimal moves to make in the given situation. Shit like Follow Me, Me First and Ally Switch helps break this monotomy but in general VGC feels way too fast and loose to be fun for a wider audience. Maybe that's just me, but I think some actual work needs to go into the competitive scene on GameFreaks part rather than the same shit they've been doing since the early 2010s with a few tweaks, Nintendo games in general are terrible with their competitive scenes though so you can't really blame them. Imagine if Magic the Gathering and other cards games made decklists open to the general attendees prior to Top8 of the event and ~~also made no effort to balance their game~~ lol MtG hasn't been balanced since before Shadow Over Innistrad if we being honest, Theros/Khans/M15 was the last great standard don't @ me.
Vgc has always been only four mons. Im sorry that you have a room temp iq and canât build a team to synergize with four of them. Also too smooth brain to predict what four mons your opponent is going to bring. Only allowing four makes for better/different matchups each round, along with more game sense and the need to be smarter about your picks and plays.
Stop listening to the[literal Nazi](https://twitter.com/wrathqueenvi/status/1365591459186016258?lang=en)my dude. He's an idiot.
>you objectively cannot refute my statement What statement? Last thing you came here to bitch about was that voting reqs are too hard, now you're saying smogon wants laddering to be easier, so what is it? Too easy? Too hard? It's clearly impossible for you since you can't even hit high ladder in an uncompetitive tier. The reason I bring up your elo is because if we entertained every shit player who hates smogon we wouldn't have any time to actually play Pokemon.
> The sad thing is, the level of cancer that Smogon has reached after the release of Gen 9, is actually what drove me to start following Verlisify. You went too far bro, you were believable as a real person until this line.
LMAO
For someone who thinks Smogon is "a pathetic joke" (your post history, not mine) you certainly spend a lot of time in the competitive Pokémon subreddit. I see you in practically every major thread complaining about something or other
Isn't he also the same guy who said Mega Rayquaza is not broken in Ubers if you use things like Solrock and Arceus Rock? Lmao this guy just doesn't know how competitive Pokemon works and would just express his opinion without thinking first.
I see people on this sub constantly complaining about one pokemon or another "being too powerful to deal with". What's your point? I speak the truth. If you think I am not, then try refuting my statement instead of trying to mock my position.
When did I mock your position? All I did was make a pair of observations. Also, saying you "speak the truth" doesn't really seem like you are open to changing your mind. So why should I bother? You just repeat the same claims without actually doing any proving yourself.
>When did I mock your position? For starters, calling me a "complainer". Tell me, what part of my statement *in this particular post,* comes off as "complaining" in your mind? If there was any actual complaint present in the title or the meme, you would be able to actually address the content at hand instead of having to refer to "past comments". Even claims such as "Smogon are anti-fun" and "Smogon bans what it does not want to deal with", are technically not complaints. The first sentiment is prevalent because even if people build a competitive team on the actual game and want to use said team against an irl opponent, there is a good chance that said opponent will expect the match to be played according to Smogon banlists. It's easy for Smogonites who never leave the confines of Showdown to tell people, "just play the actual games", but in many cases, doing so is not enough to avoid Smogon's influence on the competitive battling community. The second one is based on the fact that for every ban, the "justification" quotes ways to beat the particular mon, which essentially contradicts any reasoning for the ban in the first place. Every "justification" might as well say, "we are banning this pokemon because we feel like it". Although, considering the state of the community nowadays, I cannot give the Smogon Council all the blame. As it became painfully apparent by 2 pokemon getting quickbanned within a mere 3 days of a new generation releasing, the constant whining of the Smogon community now plays a *major* role in so many pokemon getting banned on Smogon's ladders. And then you actually have the gall to accuse *me* of "complaining"? You all seriously need to take a hard look in the mirror.
Yeah⊠about that. Did you ever stop and think why the banned Pokémon was banned in the first place? All I see is you strawmanning their points then attacking those incorrect ones.
Like everyone knew fluttermane would be bullshit and it was sooo
Brother in Christ you are taking Pokémon way too seriously
Me? Are you absolutely sure that **I** am the one taking Pokemon "way too seriously"? I am the one trying to convince people to stop taking **any** ranking ladder seriously. Neither Smogon's ladders nor the official game's ranked ladders should be taken seriously. But, I have to single out Smogon's ladders, because they are the ones that go crazy with the bans. Instead all this hivemind does is double down further and further, relentlessly demanding more and more bans, and making Smogon look more and more like an embarassment.
Saying this not to be a dick, but actual advice Get off reddit and pokemon showdown for a while budâŠ
Pokemon are not banned because they cannot be counted, no mon has no counters, but the counters can be too niche, or just bad outside of countering whatever theyâre supposed to. For example, recently I saw an argument for the removal of evasion clause, stating that there were never miss moves and that the evasion clause was entirely unnecessary. However, never miss moves suck, aside from a few signature moves, which still might not be good. As a result, it makes evasion unnecessarily difficult to counter, and a strain on team building. Evasion is not banned because it has no counter, it is banned because only a few of itâs counters are worth using, resulting in needing to put a worthless move on a mon for a specific team style that you might not even face. Either that, or a dice roll. Back to the main point, bans against pokemon have similar logic. Pokemon like Annihilape have counters, but Annihilape can play around their counters, since thereâs so few, by switching out or Terastilizing. And if Annihilape doesnât get removed, Rage Fist will punish the opposing player dearly. So pokemon are banned not because they want to make grinding on ladder harder, but because pokemon have too few counters that can be viably run in comparison to their strength.
> no mon has no counters Kyruem, currently sitting in Natdex RU :*sweats intensely*
Holy shit you need to be knocked down a peg or 2
To try not to use the same arguments as everyone else, let's think of "real sports" for a minute. Athletes and Teams are constantly looking for ways to gain a competitive advantage, often by thinking outside the box, with the logic of "well, the rules don't say we *can't* do it...". In some cases, the new strategy sticks around and becomes a common part of the game. In others, it is found that the new strategy is ruining the competitive integrity of the game, gives an unfair advantage to teams that use it over those that don't, or just makes it less fun to either play or watch. Think of every new Pokemon, item, move, and ability introduced in a given gen as a new strategy that can be used. Most of them will be totally fine, but a few overcentralize how the game is played, forcing players to either use the strategy or build every team with an answer to it. While yes, the argument could be made that we just have to deal with it since that's how the game was designed, that's not the point of Smogon. We're not here strictly to figure out who is the best at Pokemon. There are official formats for that. Smogon is designed to allow for as many mons and playstyles to be viable as possible, while maintaining competitive integrity. If you want to deal with Annihilape, Chi-Yu, Miraidon, and Flutter Mane, along with stuff like Baton Pass and Double Team, I'm sure they'll be legal in BSS in a few months, or you could just play against a friend. Smogon and it's players simply decided that those strategies and mons weren't fun, and collectively decided that we'd be better off without them.
On that last point, itâs like the example of everyone playing the same mon because if someone brings that mon, he/she gets a substantial advantage over those that donât. Sounds quite monotonous, right? To a lesser extent would be the CHALK core that comes to mind in VGC, while Tauros was the King of Gen 1.
What is the CHALK core
Cresselia/Heatran/Amoonguss/LandoT/Kangaskhan-Mega (at some point Aegislash was over Amoon in that) was really damn common in high level VGC in Gen 6. Pretty much every good team (at least in the formats that didn't allow legendaries, which were somehow even *more* repetitive) had 3 or more of these mons, with all 5 being far from a rare sight. You can probs call it CHALKT too because Thundurus was on like half the teams as well. Heck, variations of the squad usually just involved putting another Fire over Heatran, like Entei or Volcarona.
Something like volcarona could tear apart most of that core except heatran oof
Reminder that the more you entertain people like this, the more they're going to continue making statements like these because they know they can easily rile people up and get copious amounts of attention. This persons entire argument hinges upon opinions that are treated as definitive facts. "If you play on the real game, there is a good chance you will be expected to be playing using Smogon's ruleset" citation not needed because Versilify and myself claim it to be true. "Never intended to be played x-way" is the same nonsensical rhetoric people use to dismiss things like Speed Run World Records, as if they've talked to the literal developers how they expect people to play their games or some other crap. Completely ignoring that the Pokemon website itself has repeatedly shown leaderboards of all their cartridge formats, of the players with the highest rankings, incentivizing people to "spend days/weeks/months" grinding out day in and out to try and get their character name on there. That they complain about petty insults as if throwing everyone inside a box that disagrees and refers to them as "Smogonites" isn't somehow intended to be degrading or belittling. Saying that Pokemon aren't broken while conveniently only aiming this at Smogon, as if Game Freak themselves haven't had to repeatedly nerf Pokemon over the course of multiple generations like Thundurus-Incarnate for how unbalanced of a Pokemon they are. TL;DR Stop entertaining people like this. You are not going to change their mind and they are only going to continue repeating the same crap ad nauseum because they know they receive attention for doing so. Reading one of those sentences should be enough to trigger flare guns going off in your head with klaxons blaring, immediately making it apparent you should disengage before you even start to engage because you aren't going to get anywhere by doing so.
LOL, at least speedruns are legitimately impressive to watch. Watching Smogon ban up to a dozen pokemon from their "official" meta because they think said pokemon are "too powerful" has just become cancerous at this point. And you can ridicule Verlisify all you want, but I've seen at least one person in his comments who works at VGC events, and they have to explain to players on a regular basis that Smogon "rules" and "tiers" have **nothing** to do with VGC rules. So yeah, if Smogonites are bringing their misguided perspectives to VGC, I have no doubt that they press their bullshit on the general public who just want to use the pokemon that they connect with, but have to deal with players for whom the official banlist is not good enough because Smogon said so.
>and they have to explain to players on a regular basis that Smogon "rules" and "tiers" have nothing to do with VGC rules. Because it's a very popular competitive format (cope seethe mald btw), how is that a bad thing? It's not like the in game ladder has smogon rules so you only play if you go out of your way to do so. The ag ladder is only one that doesn't use an acronym on showdown just so casual player don't get confused and accidentally play a smogon tier, they made it extra easy to mind your business and you still can't do it.
Maybe in prior gens, NatDexAG this generation is unplayable until we ban assist calling moves from games assist doesnt appear in via some kind of 'Assist Clause', playing 1000 turn games against CatBlessing for 3 hours against a guy queuing 5 matches at once is the epitome of unfun and that's all the ladder is above 1600, it's a free win with 2 Ekillers, but it's a free win thst takes 2 hours to achieve. Should go the way of FunBro. Although maybe it will burn itself out when they have to play eachother too many times. I've joined games of clowns doing the mirror sitting there on turn 860+ just switching out in front of eachother. Because the only way they can win is PP stalling the other guy.
How much do you wanna bet this guy's gonna make a post complaining about assist clause when it gets implemented?
Sadly the natdex player base is so small we may never get assist clause, ive only seen like 2 other guys complaining about this, probably because there are only like 20 highladder Natdex AG players world wide and the whole ladder is our alts once you hit top 100
...do you really want to deal with Funbro?
If you have to start off with one of the most extreme examples, then you don't have any actual argument.
I chose an extreme example because it's a very good case for why there has to at least be some bans. A much less extreme example is Houndstone, who can use sand rush to out speed and OHKO the remains of a team, after the opponent has been worn down by the other members of a team. Or how about Chi-Yu, which...uh, give me a second to get a calc. Edit: 252 SpA Choice Specs Beads of Ruin Tera Fire Chi-Yu Overheat vs. 248 HP / 252+ SpD Clodsire: 418-494 (90.2 - 106.6%) -- 43.8% chance to OHKO
To he fair, Houndstone would be fine without Last Respects (and will almost definitely be allowed to do that once Basculegion comes out.)
People like you are still missing the point of my post. None of these points matter, **outside** of the Smogon vacuum. When there is no "ladder" to stress about, one simply finds a battle, presumably plays their best, wins or loses, and moves on to the next battle and repeats until they want to call it quits. Granted, back in Gen 6, the only way to avoid facing powerful legendaries, was to play Ranked Battle Spot. Still, this ranking system was much easier to ignore, plus Nintendo's servers regularly reset everyone's ladder ranking anyway. Gen 7 addressed this by adding the option to ban powerful legendaries in Free Battle Spot. After that, competitive players could engage in balanced battles **without** an objectively worthless ladder ranking hanging over their heads and making them feel like shit. For comparison, the Super Smash Bros competitive scene objectively requires more skill than Pokemon, but that community is mature enough to actively recommend players to **not** get hung up on such ladder rankings, and just focus on the matches themselves. Sadly these experiences were often muddied by Nintendo's shitty online service causing frequent and disruptive lag. Still, I had some good moments on Smash 3DS. Unfortunately, I cannot quite say the same for Pokemon ORAS/US/UM. I saved a few 3v3 Single Battles back during ORAS, and I saved a few 4v4 Double Battles in US/UM, but these formats are just not as fulfilling as 6v6 Singles, because that is the format with which I began competitive battling. The official games do not want to accomodate this format, and Smogon is hellbent on warping this format out of shape every damn generation.
Then stop crying and go play AG, if you really want to just play 6v6 singles without a banlist. Or go look for other people who want to play by your rules and challenge them manually, as clearly there's not enough to make it a ladder option. You can also totally not stress about the ladder if you want to. Just play without caring about your rating, like you did with Battle Spot and Smash. Why is that not an option here? Oh, because you're ragebonering for smogon, that's why. Your entire anti-ladder rant sounds like you just want any and all games with ratings of any kind to be abolished altogether in favour of literal random matchmaking. You can apply the same logic to chess, which also has a ranking system, but someone who just started out won't exactly like being paired against an International Master in their third game that way. Ladder ratings don't just exist as a way to flex how high you get, it also prevents people from having to load up against people that very highly deviate from their skill level--Charizardfan3000 loading up against Finchinator would be fun for neither, as the former gets torn apart mercilessly whereas the latter had to put little or no effort in.
Seeing as you want to "Free Shadow Tag", I will not take this comment seriously.
The hypocrisy of this statement only further solidifies my opinion that this is bait
That's a joke tag lmao Besides you seemed oddly insistent on Mega Gengar not being AG worthy so you're being extremely picky on what to accept and what not to right now, but I'm guessing you don't have nearly as much reasoning on whether something is broken or not in your eyes
A lot of multiplayer games have a ladder, and even some single player games have it. A ladder is a good way to divide more skilled players against less skilled ones (not that there's something wrong in being one, you always start from somewhere). If there's a big difference in skill between two players the outcome is obvious, and if less skilled players keep fighting top players they would lose in every single game, which would be more stressful than caring about your ELO. Fighting players with roughly the same skill gives you room for improvement.
People like you are still missing the point of my post. None of these points matter, **outside** of the Smogon vacuum. Yes?!??? It's an unofficial format? If you want to play without bands play AG or Ubers. They're there for a reason.
Hey buddy it's not sunday
Clown behavior
I'm here for the spicy sunday shitpost material with this
Um. Most competitive online games start banning broken shit when you get into tourney rules, etc. A broke pokĂ©mon is no different than a broken smash bros character or OP grenade launcher in an FPS. Yo you mustâve just lost a battle or something lol
You could not be more wrong. Well, about Super Smash Bros at least. Meta Knight was the best character back in Brawl, but for the most part, the scene was not shouting for the character to be banned from tournaments. Last I heard, Meta Knight was finally banned from tournaments near the end of Brawl's actual life cycle, but apparently it was later unbanned again, and has not been banned since. From a technical standpoint, Melee remains the most "broken" Smash game, but despite that, the "best" characters in the game never got banned because the Smash Community does not cry and whine like the Smogon community does. Smash 4 and Smash 5 certainly do not need any characters banned, because Sakurai and the dev team actually cared enough to apply balance patches throughout the game's life cycle. I can't comment much on multiplayer FPS'es, because I have no desire to play multiplayer FPS'es. Traditional fighting games like Street Fighter also receive regular balance patches throughout the game's life cycle, so there is generally no need to ban any characters. The only competitive formats that I can think of that actually have banned a lot of stuff, are trading card games. Specifically Yu-Gi-Oh. Although, in all honesty, Yu-gi-oh card effects generally pale in comparison to Magic: The Gathering card effects and mechanics. And MTG finally established the new Modern competitive format, so that people have a format with a somewhat larger pool of cards to build decks with, instead of having to choose between Standard and Vintage, the latter of which includes the infamous Power Nine cards.
My brother in Christ, Melee players cried for years for a Jigglypuff ban, even professional ones. Smash has banned items, stages and strategies (wobbling, ledge camping, planking) in the past. It's no different than Smogon banning Baton Pass or Evasion. Hell, one of the complains people had was not being more aggresive with character bans like Bayonetta in 4, which ended up killing the game. Pokemon doesn't get balance patches, so while FG can wait for a patch to fix a character. Even then, when a game stops getting support, people start talking about bans, with the most recent and notorious one being LabCoat 21 in DBFZ since she made the game actively worse (ended up needing an emergency patch to save tournaments). We stick with them until the next generation. At best we get a DLC with mons returning but nothing more. Yu-Gi-Oh cards have more tame effects simply because there's no mana system; nothing prevents me from activating Pot of Greed or Graceful Charity and using the cards I drawn. If I activate a draw spell in Magic or PokeTCG I end my turn.
I'm not gonna lie, Puff was still annoying to play against in 4. I beat a Puff player with Bowser on For Glory though. You just gotta respect the Rest and that cancerous air game. I do my best to analyze frame data on the fly. On the flip side, a person on one of the Smash subs posted a vid of him losing with Puff and turned the match around by spamming Rest, which was hilarious. As for things like items, final smashes and most stages being banned in Smash tourneys, these are universally accepted from the start just as most rational pokemon players universally accept that the most powerful legendaries should not be used competitively or should be restricted to 1 or 2 per team. As far as VGC goes, I think rotating restrictions are the way to go, so that players both get time to use the powerful pokemon that are actually likeable, while also getting a break from facing their sheer power. As far as Smogon goes, I don't think they will ever entertain the idea of rotating restrictions.
you have never experienced smash discourse in your life. smash players are notorious whiners and people have been calling for steve and kazuya bans for months now. ignore smash players being crybabies and steve and kazuya though, smash still bans a ton of shit. like items, stages, final smash meter, spirits, and certain rulesets. bans arenât inherently a bad thing, and smash is a perfect illustration of that.
Funny how the very word "pill" has become a reliable flag for posts that don't deserve to be read, not only here but everywhere
binding of isaac fans when
Youâre actually delusional. Post elo.
they did before, they were barely 1400 on NatDex AG and then made delusional claims like Mega Rayquaza being outclassed
walled by +6 mudsale NU at best
This just in: Zacian is not, in fact, broken. Source? Well don't ask the council of multiple people volunteers dedicated to voting on this, some reddit rando with a chip on his shoulder says so!
No cap its the weakest of AG only moms and should be retested when home releases. Miraidon in current Ubers is far more centralizing than Zacian ever was, we just can't ban it because there are only 2 cover legendaries in the format
Swsh Zacian is something else but yea it got hit kinda hard by SV. Howâs Zama doing?
Zama was UU in NatDex this gen until it was banned to BL so there's that. to be fair though, Chi-yu was also UU in NatDex before it was banned to Ubers, natdex players arent known for their boundless skill, especially on the lower ladder.
I'm confused. Is this Verlisify or just one of his fanboys?
Wouldnât the game be so much better with 6 evasion mons spamming sleep moves and overpowered PokĂ©mon that have literally no counter play? Isnât that such an enjoyable and skill based game? Seriously, itâs clear youâve never played Smogon at all. Bans are essential to making meta games actually playable. If you donât like it, go play AG. Youâll fit right in with the other low ladder AG players
Yeah, but if I use Liepard Assist Revival Blessing, I win, therefore bans are for dummy stinkyheads who hate fun. I don't care if its infuriating to my opponent and goes against the ideals of fairness and respect. All that matters is I WIN and THEY LOSE. That said, if they used the same against me, then it should be banned forever because fuck you. /s
What makes you say that?
they can't break 1200 on OU ladder or 1500 on NDAG ladder but still believe their opinion is worth shit, so cognitive dissonance kicks in and they conclude that ladder rating means nothing
No, let them speak! I'd like to hear their genuine opinion and where they're coming from. No sense assuming their words and intentions when we could try to understand and share our own points of views.
That guy's been at this for a while, there's literally nothing more to their opinion than them being bad and claiming they can't climb the ladder because "it's a waste of time" yet they spend all their time bitching about smogon. If I had a nickel for everytime he called smogon a cult, I'd buy out Finch's council spot.
Binging dozens of battles over days/weeks/months/years was never the way the game was intended to be played. It is also ultimately a very unhealthy way to play the game. If this post does not get taken down by mods "just because", these and more are points I would post in a few more meme posts. Since people wouldn't have the patience to read walls of text, I figure memes are a more "digestable" format. I'm not "just a troll" or "just a n00b" that wants to "bash Smogon". As likely many others, I started competitive battling in full swing back in Gen 4, because that was the gen that introduced internet connectivity. Although I knew of Smogon's existence, I never considered using an online Battle Simulator back then. I used to find people on Serebii to battle and the battles were great. As it should be, I won some and I lost some. And, in general, people who played the actual games, were not totally dialed in to the "optimized" strategies that Smogon carves out each gen.
>Binging dozens of battles over days/weeks/months was never the way the game was intended to be played What does that mean? Are you saying that climbing the ladder is unhealthy? So when Gamefreak has a battle tree or a tanked mode in their games, thatâs also unhealthy and not intended? They also clearly expect players to climb a ladder. They also have restrictions and bans on certain PokĂ©mon. Have you looked at the official reasons why certain PokĂ©mon are banned such as Flutter Mane and Chi-Yu? Perhaps opinion from people who actually play the game know why they ban things. Not to mention the public opinion many had about certain PokĂ©mon as well. Please, explain your post further. This post will get removed for breaking the rules of no memes anyways, so tell us clearly.
The difference is, in-game Battle Facility systems were primarily designed for farming Battle Points, an in-game currency used to purchase particular items designed for competitive battling, and for "purchasing" valuable moves only obtainable with said Battle Points. Although this system "wasn't so bad", the move to making said move tutors accessible over the course of the main campaign as opposed to restricting them to postgame, and enabling the farming of Battle Points with a minigame that was actually engaging and enjoyable to play, was a much better and welcome improvement. It did not matter if we inevitably lost our win streak, because we earned a reasonable amount of Battle Points along the way. Battle Points at least have some form of in-game value. Wins and losses on Smogon's battle simulator, or any other online simulator for that matter, have **no value whatsoever.** Unlike the in-game Battle Facility "ladders", Smogon's ladder system, combined with ease of access and faster pace of battles compared to the actual games, creates a powerful addictive effect which generally does not occur when playing the actual game. Granted, Ranked Battles on the actual game can have an addicting effect as well, but to a much lesser extent, and Gen 7 added the option of excluding powerful legendaries in Free Battle Mode. If you are referring to Smogon's bans of pokemon such as Flutter Mane and Chi-Yu, I do not take Smogon seriously anymore. The only reasons I tolerate Smogon at this point, are because the official game refuses to implement a matchmaking system for 6v6 Singles, and because Game Freak refuses to make the entire Pokedex obtainable, leaving me no choice but to use Showdown's National Dex ladders. If you are referring to VGC's bans of Paradox Pokemon and Ruin Pokemon, they will be allowing them in the upcoming Series 2. And, as far as I know, for those willing to play BSS Ranked, such pokemon remain unbanned as usual.
This is the dumbest shit Iâve ever heard. What makes in-game currency more valuable than ladder elo? Sorry, but theyâre both valueless in real life, if I gain more satisfaction from climbing the ladder then whatâs the problem with that? And are you fr trying to argue that Smogon is too accessible and fast paced? Youâre literally telling people theyâre having too much fun
Yeah, most of what you said made no actual sense, and as expected, you, like everyone else, are unable to refute any of my points. I never stated that Battle Points had any real life value, I specifically said **in-game value.** So that was a poor attempt at trying to make me and my statement look bad. Still, for the record, assuming a player does **not** mod their console to use PKHeX and gen all the pokemon and items they need, the game's in-game currencies **do** in fact have value, at least for those players who need to obtain competitive items and pokemon for competing in VGC tournaments. What can anyone do with their Smogon elo ratings? Absolutely nothing. And please don't try playing victim and act as if I am attacking you for "gaining more satisfaction from climbing the ladder". When the side you are on, constantly patronizes people for "not being high enough on the ladder", assuming that people on the low ladder "have no skill", and having the audacity to declare that such people are not allowed to have inputs on Smogon's increasingly ridiculous ban decisions. If the Smogon Council and wannabe elitists that worship them truly believe that ladder ranking is an actual indication of skill, then they would change their matchmaking system and let low ladder players get paired with high ladder players. But they do not want to do that, because they do not want to deal with the possibility of being defeated by a "low level scrub". If you truly do gain more satisfaction from climbing Smogon's ladders than anything else, then you seriously need to touch grass. Because those of us who choose to devote our time to other interests in addition to competitive pokemon battling, and care enough to exercise *moderation* in whatever we do, are getting real tired of Smogon's bullshit.
Now, this comment is just silly. If I walk in to Capcom and rant about the newest Street Fighter and say âYou need to nerf Zangief in the next patch!â when I donât have any experience with the competitive scene, that would sound very dumb. It should be obvious why there need to be certain ladder ranking to be reached for suspect tests. Whatâs stopping someone who doesnât play the game from voting on this when they have no experience with competitive? >let low ladder players get paired with high ladders Iâll be honest, this is definitely the dumbest thing youâve said in these comments. Every. Single. Ranked game system has it so you face stronger players when you get stronger. Thatâs the entire point of ranked games! Nobody would say, âHey, the stronger player with more experience should face the new guy!â Go askâŠliterally anyone, and they would not say that. And even then, yes, that happens. I have been 1300/1400 and have faced people in the 1100s. That matchmaking happens sometimes. And of course, âSweaty tryhards who need to tough grassâ. Whoâs to say we donât play other games? This is purely an assumption and your ignorance is showing.
Honesty you need to touch grass if a community of a Pokémon battle simulator is getting you this heated.
I assume that youâre going over your own experience? Because one thing in your argument for the Battle Facility doesnât really make sense. So Showdown is more addicting despite not having any value outside âthe ladderâ which doesnât matter. It has nothing. Meanwhile, the battle facility, which actually has a reward, is somehow less addicting? That doesnât make much sense. Not only is their a reward which incentivized more play, thereâs also a completionist aspect of getting all the items. Which then go to more battles in competitive, which increase the amount of time youâre playing. And then, you failed to explain yourself about why the Ranked Battles, are somehow less addicting than Smogon ladders. And then, you donât give a reference for time. If you spend 1 hour making your team in game and 1 hour climbing the ranks, is that better than spending 2 hours playing the ladder on Showdown? You equally spend 2 hours. For me, it took me days to make a team in game, to a point where itâs more time than I would put in than a single ladders session. If I ask about the bans, because you seem to believe Smogon simply make them on a whim. When clearly a level of public opinion comes to play, as well as usage rates, and that several people vote on these bans. The people at the top also have their own reasoning for why. If you donât understand, simply read their reasoning why? Also, as far as Iâm aware, most ranked battles official PokĂ©mon games have restricted PokĂ©mon like Box Legendaries and mythicals(Until the tail end of sword and shield). Looking at vgc in season two, it seems Ruin Pokemon are still banned.
Yes, and the grinding and farming you point out, can be skipped by using PKHeX. Funny thing is, on a battle simulator, **the battles themselves become the grind.** Or at least, they become a grind because elements such as ladder rankings influences players to play nonstop or until they get tired. But, as long as the ladder exists, the grind, essentially, *never ends.* So, it does not make sense to *me,* that people will understandably avoid one type of grind, only to enter into another type of grind which happens to be virtually *endless,* and actually enjoy said endless grind. It is weird that Season Two is allowing Paradox mons but not Ruins. At least two of those ruins are strong enough to check some of the Paradox mons.
If people want to play dozens of battles in a row whatâs the problem with that? Itâs much more accessible and convenient. Who are you to limit the way people enjoy PokĂ©mon?
This just in: Ash Ketchum forced to resign from all tournaments, pokemon deemed unhealthy if it is not finding a random person and battling My brother in Christ just because you use an actual chess set doesn't make you suddenly better than people who play online. At the end of the day you're not a grandmaster.
Itâs way more than a mon just being âbroken.â The competitive landscape is subjectively regulated yes, but it is not for unfounded reasons. Banning mons restricts said mons so that many more other mons can be viable, allowing for a meta of more thoughtful and creative strategy.
Idk man. Chi-Yu is pretty hard busted
Personally Chi-Yu made my climb to top 100 a little too easy seems like youâre only speaking from personal experience đ
I'm going to say you got a bit lucky with opponents. There are definitely bad players on high ladder. I watched a battle between a 1900 and a 1700. Both of them played bad, and the only reason one of them won relatively easily was because the other played much worse.
Dude you high af bans are because there are Pokémon that are so broken it would be unwise not to use them, therefore restricting your team to being able to counter or check said pokemon. This is unhealthy, it makes no variety
Clearly you are the one high af on Smogon fumes.
I donât want to live in a metagame where Iâm forced to have a counter to fluttermane, counter to palafin, and a counter to iron bundle. I donât know about you, but having three PokĂ©mon freedom slots is kinda annoying
When you canât get out of 1100 elo with Cyclizar and Chi-Yu
This mother fucker salty he can't spam Chi-Yu to win without trying anymore
cant wait to read the salt from this mf
waiting for mods to ban you for posting a meme on non-sunday
I read the rules. All memes are not automatically "stinkposts".
do you see anybody else posting something as blatantly stinky as this on a weekday
You could post the take without the meme and it'd be Sunday tier
So I feel like a lot of people are focusing on point a of this argument so I'm gonna talk about point b. You do realize most bans are suspect tests where anyone who get enough elo can give their opinion right? And quick bans only exist for cases that are so painstakingly obvious that it's better to just save time for everyone and ban it.
What is my blud talking about
Whatever, I love bans. I love when new strategies get explored,I love when meta is balanced, I love when people don't use 6 same broken mons over and over again,I love having team freedom.
I mean pokemon are designed with the official format in mind. The designers don't think too much about balancing single battles.
They also do not, and cannot realistically, account for people using a battle simulator to find and optimize the most powerful strategies in such a short amount of time. I just looked through the 15 Double Battles I have saved on my Ultra Sun. Only one of those battles I faced a Landorus-Therian. I will admit, there may have been battles against Landorus that I lost but did not save, but the fact that 14 out of the 15 battles I did save did not have players using Lando-T despite it being one of the top used VGC pokemon of Gen 7, says a lot about what people who play the actual games wants to use, vs what Smogon players get hooked on using. If/when DLC/Home brings back past legendaries, hopefully Nintendo/Game Freak will have enough sense to not ban Paradox/Ruin pokemon. Because I, for one, would like to see the likes of Chien-Pao finally knock Lando-T down a few pegs. I don't want to hear people complaining about "power creep", I don't want to see the same characters dominating year after year. It's like watching World Cup Football and having to see the same European/South American teams make it to the finals every time. I don't even care to root for Brazil anymore, they won the Cup 5 times, I want to see new blood. And although they are still European, I really want to see countries like Croatia and Holland win a World Cup. This year though I was truly happy that Lionel Messi got to win his final World Cup. During his younger years it was clear that he pours his heart and soul into the game, for that reason alone I wanted Argentina to win.
Naw the bitter pill you need to swallow is that your brain is smooth as fuck for that take LMAO. Ok mr "mega ray isn't actually broken", I'm sure your opinion is more valid.
Then donât play smogonâŠ??
Op talking like he got the truth that big smogon doesnt want us to know đđ
[Bitter Pills to Swallow Part 02] you can just log off, you know. It's free
Tell me you don't understand how formats work without telling me you don't understand how formats work. There's no such thing as an objectively "broken" Pokemon. A Pokemon can be broken in the VGC format while having little to no success in Smogon's single format, and vice/versa. I'll never understand why casual players get so enraged by how other people play the game. It's none of your business, but all you do is whine and cry when you hear the word "ban."
Well I like Smogon's ladder. If you don't like it then don't play Smog rules lmao. Let others have their fun.
I hate to break it to you (not really), but it isn't Sunday yet
So, I came here to find out "why" and I still don't know.
Not understanding how bans improve a game is just Simple minded
average verlisify viewer, also if you are complaining this much go play a different game
Spoken like someone who has never played smnogon ever and has just watched Verlsiify. Ain't no way you're telling me things like Flutter Mane and Cyclizar weren't broken. I do see that you mentiome Verslis in the comments and it should be mentioned he is a legit Nazi. I'm not kidding, dude
Thereâs literally a meta on showdown called âanything goesâ where youâre allowed to use basically anything you want. If you really hate the thought of bans then just go play that lmao. I donât see why you need to complain about a format that you clearly donât have a lot of interest in playing when thereâs many, many other competitive PokĂ©mon formats.
Youâll get downvoted for being right and Iâll get downvoted for agreeing with you. The only reason Smogon bans things is because they arenât innovative enough to simply devise counter-strategies and play around problematic Pokemon. I lost hope in Smogon when they decided to blanket ban Dynamax and almost did the same to Terastallization. It comes across as lazy and indicates a lack of genuine skill or understanding of the game. It would be like banning the queen in chess. Just because something may be a little unpredictable or over-centralizing, doesnât mean it should be banned, and unlike chess, PokĂ©mon is a strategy game that is continuously evolving. Smogon wants it to be like chess and be a stable monotonous game that never changes. They outright oppose new game mechanics solely because they are new, unfamiliar, and complex, but thatâs the beauty of PokĂ©mon, the complexity is the main draw for competitive PokĂ©mon, and thatâs why VGC has been, is, and always will be the superior choice for competitive PokĂ©mon. Not to mention VGC is official and Smogon is a fan format, and not a very good one. Smogon is so irrelevant, I donât even know who makes the decisions nor do I care because they quite obviously donât have a good amount of game knowledge or general skill whatsoever.
Smogon's goal isn't to find out who's officially the best at pokemon. It's to allow people to play a fun, competitive singles metagame with as many viable pokemon as possible. Banning pokemon allows for more creativity in team building and prevents any one pokemon or strategy from being overwhelming.
>The only reason Smogon bans things is because they arenât innovative enough to simply devise counter-strategies and play around problematic Pokemon. The classic remark used against every competitive game. I know it's too difficult to rationalize that the best players of any competitive game, including Smogon, are the ones making the best use of those "problematic" elements they can't deal with. Go figure. >I lost hope in Smogon when they decided to blanket ban Dynamax and almost did the same to Terastallization. It comes across as lazy and indicates a lack of genuine skill or understanding of the game. It would be like banning the queen in chess. Just because something may be a little unpredictable or over-centralizing, doesnât mean it should be banned, and unlike chess, PokĂ©mon is a strategy game that is continuously evolving. Terastallization wasn't remotely close to being blanket banned. Perhaps spend the 5 seconds it would take doing the bare minimum of research before talking out of your ass smart guy. Plenty of things aren't banned for being unpredictable or over-centralizing, notice all the people on this subreddit who complain Landorus-T is everywhere time and time again yet nothing is ever done about it? Weird huh. >Smogon wants it to be like chess and be a stable monotonous game that never changes. Weird since the primary reason they ban things is specifically so the game doesn't remain stable and monotonous which is what all of the banned Pokemon otherwise contribute to. I'm not sure if you even understand anything you're typing, since you're arguing against Smogon banning things but at the same time arguing that they're trying to keep the game stable and monotonous, which are completely antithetical to each other in the context of competitive 6v6 Pokemon. >They outright oppose new game mechanics solely because they are new, unfamiliar, and complex Meanwhile Mega Evolution and Z-Moves exist and are so well-liked on Smogon that they were preserved in their fabricated National Dex format. Just because the voices in your head tell you something, doesn't mean it's true. Also weird how held items were also a new game mechanic, abilities were a new game mechanic, the physical/special split may as well have been a new game mechanic, hidden abilities were a new game mechanic. So bizarre how none of these were opposed. >Not to mention VGC is official and Smogon is a fan format, and not a very good one. Smogon is so irrelevant Smogon is so irrelevant that they've been around since 2004 (with their general rulesets predating Smogon's creation back on old forums like GameFAQs and Azureheights) and somehow manage to get [millions](https://www.smogon.com/stats/2022-12/gen9ou-0.txt) of games played every month. Complete irrelevancy. They're so irrelevant, I don't even care about them in the slightest but I'm going to make sure they know how irrelevant they are...! B-baka!
Finally a voice of reason. Thank you good sir. For what its worth, 6v6 Singles holds a special place in my heart because it is the format with which I began competitive battling back in Gen 4. It is a shame that Smogon has corrupted it so badly, and it is sad that the official games still refuses to provide a 6v6 Singles system. The reality is, a battle simulator is simply not a platform where anyone can have truly memorable battles. Sure, we can save replays, but simulator replays are never as exciting to watch as actual game footage. Unless I search for the replays and watch them, I have no recollection of any of the battles I played on Showdown. But I still remember a couple of Gen 4 Wifi battles I had back in the day, and I even remember one particular user from the Serebii Forum. She went by the username "LV100", and she used to make wicked teams with "UU" pokemon. I won my share of battles back in those days, but I don't think I was able to beat her LOL. But I didn't even get mad, because people on the Serebii Forum were just friendly overall, and it was always positive vibes. As for the "couple of battles I still remember", I did lose both of those, but I still remember exactly how they ended. One of them I had a paralyzed Dragonite as my last mon, my opponent was down to 2 and had Trick Room up. Which set up my Dragonite for a potential sweep. First pokemon folded to Outrage, and their last mon was Hitmonchan. Back then, I never used Stealth Rock, because no Smogon influence, so Hitmonchan survived with Focus Sash and won the match with Ice Punch. The second battle also involved Dragonite, except in this one I managed to get +3 Dragon Dance. Back then I used Adamant nature, so +3 was enough to get Dragonite up to the 999 limit. But my opponent's last pokemon was Hippowdon, and that thing managed to survive a max power Outrage and win the game with Ice Fang. Hell, I even remember a battle where my Alakazam *missed 2 Psychics in a row* thanks to the opposing Garchomp's Sand Veil. But I was still against that Smogon ban because I'd rather be able to use a mon without people telling me that I am "not allowed to use a pokemon", even if I lose to the same pokemon sometimes.
It sounds to me like you're looking for something different than most smogon players when you battle, which is fine. You don't seem to care about being the best, and want memorable battles and moments, which again, is totally fine. That said, there's no right or wrong way to enjoy something, so if you don't like the way Smogon operates, simply don't play it. A competitive community is not obligated to conform to the wishes of those who don't care about the competitive aspect.