UU Problems

[Liz Angeles]

The intention of this thread is not to flame anyone or unnecessarily start drama, but I feel there are several issues in UU right now which have been present throughout the gen and haven't been addressed.

1. The Missing Tier Leader
Has anyone heard from Indigo Plateau recently? This is an overall minor point but I feel that IP's status as co tier leader means that it's fair to expect a certain amount of activity from him, and he's seemingly been gone since uupl. I have heard things about what he's doing/why he hasn't been active but none of it is public. What is public is that he's abstained from multiple voting slates this gen. Ultimately I don't think anyone has to be active all the time, but because he is tier leader, IP has certain powers, such as deciding who gets on council/what gets suspected, and he and the UU leadership generally should have a responsibility to explain what's going on in his absence.

2. The sample teams
This is my biggest frustration with UU this gen. The sample teams thread has been a joke the entire gen. The first sign we had a problem was when we were the last official tier to have samples, in spite of existing far longer than any of the lower tiers. The fact that PU had samples before us despite UU existing for 3 months longer is embarassing. On top of this, we are now the only tier to not have updated our samples since home came out. I understand that the standard for samples has to be somewhat high, but pia manages to release samples every month, and it's now basically a meme even among influential uu players that you should just go to pia if you want samples. There are a not insignificant number of people who are loading teams that are for a completely different meta on ladder because the sample thread is such a joke. It's clear that samples don't have to be tour finals quality every time, and a basic check of general necessities (rocker, volt immune) followed by a subjective review by council can get a lot of stuff done.

3. Tiering Surveys
UU is also the only tier to have had no tiering surveys this gen. Why. We had about 6 months of fairly similar metagames, and even if the general feeling among council was that rain/psyterrain/quaquaval/gengar at various points weren't problems, surely it would've been nice to know how the wider community felt about these things. My point isn't about whether or not any of these things are broken, it's that every playerbase had a chance to give their opinions on their tier except UU. Ultimately I don't feel this has been an issue post home because there just isn't time to suspect anything before dlc drops and the meta is pretty well balanced overall, but to me the lack of surveys was the most frustrating part of pre home tiering and I think it's important to rectify.

4. The Forums
The sample teams also ties into this point but wow the forums are dead. We currently have one forum project, the weekly teambuilding competition. This project also ran pre home before ending on week 13 for seemingly no reason. Other projects included:

Break this team, which ran for 4 weeks before ending, although this one was likely activity related, with the last week receiving only one response​

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UU research academy, which lasted for 8 weeks before ending. While this is partly activity related, the three week break between week 6 and week 7 for no reason might've been a contributing factor to the activity falling off.​

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Lure that threat, which died for seemingly no reason.​

Ultimately none of these projects were overly popular but the fact they got started and then just died for no reason is very poor organisation. We could likely remedy this with more diligent host selecting and having backups in the event a host is unavailable for a period of time or quits. Combine this with our "resource" threads, which include a role compendium that hasn't been updated since January, sv uu cores, which hasn't been posted in since april and basically died in january, as well as the sample teams thread which I spoke about already. The resource most commonly brought up as one that does get updated is the UU speedlist, which wasn't updated for 4 months until last week. Newer players looking for resources on forums have access to the vr, the creative/underrated sets thread, and the team bazaar (simple questions/answers is labelled as a resource too but idk if it really is one). The vr is the only one of these which is regularly used. There's a lot of talk about newer players in UU recently but so many of us started in pia because it's basically the only way to actually learn anything about UU, and while it's great that pia exists the reliance on it doesn't sit right with me. If there is a problem with getting activity on forum projects then we could consider tying some projects into the UU discord.

5. Transparency
There is a major lack of transparency from council outside of 2 or 3 members who post regularly, maybe you can expand the list slightly if you include people who are active on discord. After home released we got under inspection, which was released with this message

We got the suggestion, so here it is: our version of an On The Radar thread, so that you guys can keep up with UU Council affairs even easier. Here we'll post in advance whenever we intend to vote on something or if any impending suspect tests are on the way, so watch this space if you're interested.

alongside the first voting slate. One week later a vote was held with no post in this thread beforehand where a pokemon with marginal ban support, hisuian lilligant, was quickbanned. I say it had marginal ban support because I know a lot of uu players and none of them had told me they thought it was banworthy. After the ban most people I spoke to were surprised, although largely apathetic, not because they felt it was banworthy but because it didn't really add anything to the meta and it's just a random set up mon pretty much. Ultimately I posted on why I didn't agree with the ban and hariyana grande implied here that it was generally accepted among council that it was probably a bit hasty but they didn't want it to ruin uuwc pools basically, and I accept this overall, but it happened in an unannounced vote in which both tier leaders abstained, which seems very unusual to me. I do know why both didn't vote, but I don't know if either gave a reason publically (I know IP didn't), and I feel that this situation isn't ideal and is one of the reasons I bring up IPs absence at the start of this thread.

In general I feel there is very little explanation given as to why decisions are made or not made, particularly with regard to suspects. I'm not saying council chat has to be public but there are times where council members express their opinion that something is ban/suspect worthy and then when someone brings it up in metagame discussion they receive a response along the lines of the council thinks this has counterplay. Is there a vote on whether or not something should be tested? How many votes do you need to test something? Is it just through general discussion people change their minds? Does the proximity of tier shifts affect whether or not something gets tested? I'd also like to ask again why we've had no tiering surveys? UU has had three suspects this gen, and only one resulted in a ban. Several people have expressed to me that they felt the metagame was in an awful state at the time of the sandy shocks suspect and that we basically tested it about two months too late when there were way bigger issues. The timing of the scizor test also felt strange given that quaquaval had just dropped alongside rain, both of which were incredibly controversial. What made these mons get suspected instead of other things in the tier at the time? And the real question here is, why are uu council the only council not to consult the community on what should be tested? And if you're not gonna consult the community, why have suspect tests at all? Is it just a tiebreak on a split council vote?

Ultimately for all I know there are plans to address some of this post dlc, but if there is then I have no idea, which might tie into the whole transparency thing, and it's not like people haven't mentioned tiering surveys. I hate posting this because I don't think it does me any favours but I don't think anything I've said here is unfair or inaccurate, and I think these are major problems.

 

[Lily]

Since this post is directed at leadership and leadership is currently just me, I'll take the liberty of responding as such:

1. The Missing Tier Leader

Not my place to air IP's dirty laundry so I won't. What I will say is that it doesn't affect you or any other community member in the slightest unless you need to talk to him because actively hate me to the point of refusing to speak to me about your concerns, and if that's the case then tough luck. Whether he stepped down today or not, nothing would change at all. The only person affected by one tier leader's inactivity is the other tier leader and I'm doing just fine.

2. The sample teams

Yes, these are bad. I'll work on getting more people to run these come DLC shifts. Thanks for bringing it up, could do without the rudeness though.

3. Tiering Surveys

We've gone on record both on the forum and multiple times in the UU Discord to say why there have been none. To sum it up here again:

- Surveys on this scale are an inefficient form of data as a result of confirmation bias;
- Many respondents are trolls or people who don't actively play SV UU which can fudge numbers quite severely and has before;
- Choosing to use a qualified survey base ends up in elitism and disregarding of new player opinions which is antithetical to how I choose to run the tier;
- We've felt as a council that the metagame has overall been very healthy throughout its lifespan which is a sentiment we've also gotten from the players who actually talk to us;
- They are extremely bad at drumming up discussion and transparency which will be touched on later.

On top of that we've addressed the most commonly spoken about elements (rain, quaquaval, etc) at length before - you just didn't like our answers and chose to ignore them. Not my problem.

4. The Forums

Forums are not a good medium in 2023. Take a look at the Ubers forum. Zero projects to be found. Other lower tiers have zombified versions that are realistically not very active. Nobody wants to host these because nobody participates in them, and that is not a systemic issue with the tier, it's just the mindset of newer players and that's fine. These were only ever a luxury anyway. You're welcome to try to host one yourself since you have a lot to say about the people who take the time out of their day to actually try.

Similar to the sample teams, the resources will be worked on since those are more of a necessity than the projects.

5. Transparency

Now if we want to talk about transparency, let's talk about the fact that you chose to go behind my back to gather the opinions of multiple unnamed community members - none of whom seem to have the guts to talk to me themselves, so props to you for at least having the courage - to tell me that I'm the one not doing enough despite the fact that, with one exception, every single tiering decision this generation has been communicated in advance. Not just in a forum post. I've taken hours out of my real life to talk to people on discord, in the UU room, I've gone on fucking streams at three in the morning just to announce suspect tests early for the people that bother to listen but that's still not good enough. I've gone out of my way to explain my rationale between everything that's been voted on and on most of everything that hasn't.

The Hisuian Lilligant was graciously handled my Monky because I did the unthinkable and went on vacation with friends for a week and a vote needed to happen before UUWC pools. Naturally some things were missed because of the sudden leadership shuffle and one of those things was advance warning of the ban happening. We are human and things slip through. Whether or not that was announced in advance really wouldn't have mattered, it was going to be gone anyway; internally we've also been talking about a retest recently which we said would be happening after UUWC but obviously we got screwed over by DLC timing.

I don't know what you want from me. I have done everything in my power and more to try to make sure that the community gets a fair say even when it's something I disagree with. If you go back and look through the blind voting threads for this gen's UU suspects (which, by the way, we have more of those than any non-OU tier this gen, so I'm not sure why you chose to mention us having three tests as if it was a bad thing), I was on the losing side every time. I care far more about the playerbase than I do about the metagame and I've poured everything I have into fostering the best community and council I possibly can so that everyone can enjoy UU. I'm sorry if that's not good enough.

Above all else, you need moderator approval to post threads here, and this was never getting that.