I'm suprised. The contradition really caught me off guard.

[caioxlive13]

Context, there was LC as a official tier in PokéMMO. The devs removed it, and people theorized for some causes for the removal. 

Gbwead, in the LC Club(You can check on the Clubs section and join LC Club to see it), pointed out 5 possible reasons for LC being removed and i'll write and explain them there one by one. 

1. The LC tier kept exposing a lot of bugs that otherwise would be unoticed like dmg rolls, recycle not working, etc. Through those bugs, LC was making the game look bad.

Spoiler

What he sayed there is that when LC was there a lot of bugs would've been exposed, and they wouldn't otherwise. LC was the tier that exposed more bugs 

2. The LC tier had a lot of bans and even ability bans (AT & Download). Devs do not like tiers with a lot of bans.

Spoiler

Back in the time, the tier had complex banning things that was bugged and things could be out of banlist unintentionally. One emblematic case was AT unbanned for a month in LC. 

3. The LC tier did not have a large player base like other tiers.

Spoiler

LC failed to fill a lot of tours. Depending on the timezone, there would be no one playing 

4. The LC tier needed to go in order to make room for randoms.

5. The LC tier didn't have a very versatile metagame and was always defined by very high usage mons that usually ended up banned.

Spoiler

LC was supposedly centralized on some mons and there was no diversity at all in teams.

The reason to bring the thread is because if there was all reasons to LC get out, in absolutely all points the devs contradicted themselves, with the last pearl this week. 

 - First one was contradicted with the Randoms that exposed even more bugs. There is a lot of bugs found but not fixed yet, like the species bug that takes base form when considerating filters and level adjustments
- The fourth one was always contraditory. There is an actual limit to how many formats they can put in the game?  
 - Third prove themselves after Randoms, Basically all lower tiers had almost no games. LC was failing to fill tours every time? Now UU, NU and Doubles tours doesn't fill, There is even a limit for how much seats you can put on a tour of those tiers on community-hosted tours, if it's fee based. 32, to be exact. 
 - Fifth point proved himself over time. On June, 2022, that was exactly the case of OU. Either you runned Rain, Dreishao or Chansey + Rotom + Skarm/Cofa. Any other option and you'll lose to anyone over 700+ elo. If HAs given variety to OU, same was done to LC.
 - The cherry on the top was the second one. They this week announced on one tiering case that instead of the normal procedure of banning the mon for OU(They ban, nerf it in some way, then bring it back), they would do a Complex ban instead for him. And yes, I'm talking about Draco Hydreigon, banned for OU and allowed in Doubles. The complex bans was one thing they hated the most. Also, this was contraditory since December, 2022. Because they hated to ban things over and over again from a banlist, right? Well, seems like this is no longer a case because since December moody is on banlist but they did not nerfed it or removed it yet. 

Edited February 2 by caioxlive13

[razimove]

Or maybe, just maybe even 16 player tournaments were hard to fill cause its a dead format that probably has a niche for less than 1% of the playerbase. You guys overthink this stuff a lot, they simply discontinued support since its not something that is engaging for the community, plus its extra work on their hands for something with a very small niche that can be managed by the community. Afaik you can still make LC matches, you just dont have official support.

[FlacuSkye]

5 hours ago, caioxlive13 said:

 Now UU, NU and Doubles tours doesn't fill, There is even a limit for how much seats you can put on a tour of those tiers on community-hosted tours, if it's fee based. 32, to be exact. 

This. ALL lower tiers should be removed, thank god someone finally said it.

[Doctor]

1 hour ago, razimove said:

Or maybe, just maybe even 16 player tournaments were hard to fill cause its a dead format that probably has a niche for less than 1% of the playerbase. You guys overthink this stuff a lot, they simply discontinued support since its not something that is engaging for the community, plus its extra work on their hands for something with a very small niche that can be managed by the community. Afaik you can still make LC matches, you just dont have official support.

let him cook, I wanna see what he does with the mayo

[JurassicMick]

I'm just leaving a comment so I can check what happened with the mayo later today. Don't mind me.

[Poufilou]

2 hours ago, razimove said:

Or maybe, just maybe even 16 player tournaments were hard to fill cause its a dead format that probably has a niche for less than 1% of the playerbase. You guys overthink this stuff a lot, they simply discontinued support since its not something that is engaging for the community, plus its extra work on their hands for something with a very small niche that can be managed by the community. Afaik you can still make LC matches, you just dont have official support.

It has never reached a point where 16 would have been hard to fill. People (real people, not Caio) don't overthink this issue when they point out how LC was treated. You are free to choose not giving it any thought or to not care at all but here you are posting stuff that isn't true and portray it as if it was the reasonable way to act when it's about the same level of bull than Caio post - its not "simple" it is a choice made by devs that is questionable even with elements of why that choice was made. 

 

The 5 hypothesis made by gbwead in his original post are legit for a player to have and we could add more of them. We can judge the choices made by devs when facing these elements. We can emit opinion on how it could have been handled. We can talk about the success or the failure of this choice. We can talk about the evolution of logic and game design in these decisions. 

 

But please if you don't care at all about LC and you still want to comment, I guess just make fun of the clown and don't make fun of the balloon he's holding - unless you want to join him. 

 

Edited February 2 by Poufilou

[razimove]

1 hour ago, Poufilou said:

It has never reached a point where 16 would have been hard to fill. People (real people, not Caio) don't overthink this issue when they point out how LC was treated. You are free to choose not giving it any thought or to not care at all but here you are posting stuff that isn't true and portray it as if it was the reasonable way to act when it's about the same level of bull than Caio post - its not "simple" it is a choice made by devs that is questionable even with elements of why that choice was made. 

 

The 5 hypothesis made by gbwead in his original post are legit for a player to have and we could add more of them. We can judge the choices made by devs when facing these elements. We can emit opinion on how it could have been handled. We can talk about the success or the failure of this choice. We can talk about the evolution of logic and game design in these decisions. 

 

But please if you don't care at all about LC and you still want to comment, I guess just make fun of the clown and don't make fun of the balloon he's holding - unless you want to join him. 

 

Im pretty sure there were 16 seats that didnt fill a lot of times, especially on EU mornings, I remember pretty well buying entire LC comp boxes and then taking a while to find myself a tournament I could join at those hours, this was probably before the chinese started to join the server, cant really say much after as I didnt bother with it after.

 

Its a valid concern for someone that liked that format, and nothing wrong with that, but to some point it almost feels like a complete witch hunt by you guys to try and justify devs actions. Has there ever been LC tours that were successful community hosted without insane prize pools? People join the big ones just for the prize pool, not for the format.

[Seth]

I used to host many LC tournaments as a staff member, and while I also questioned the decision to some level at the moment I eventually understood why it was needed to be done. This is just my own thoughts - I was never part of any decision or discussion about this, so this is just my subjective take on the subject.

 

Based on how much time it took to work on the events as a staff member (both as a host and for event coordinating staff members), including PvP council and staff working on the competitive tier list, it likely wasn't worth it, while looking at the amount of players who supported the tier (seriously). Time was a factor, which is already quite limited - especially for a voluntary project. It required a lot of time to organize and keep it active for such a small portion of the competitive scene that it was concluded that the tier should be on its own. Also, prizes weren't optimal with the IV distribution then if I remember correctly - most of the time, the shiny prizes were useless in LC due to IVs, so winners would use them in another tier. Correct me if I am wrong. 

 

For how long was LC an official tier? Was it considered a gimmick tier just like random tier now? These are genuine questions, cause I don't know. LC was probably given some time to see where it was heading it, probably just like random tier is/was. Was LC getting more players with time? Probably not.

 

TLDR; LC is a fun tier - but workload to keep it officially active probably wasn't worth it. 

[Poufilou]

18 minutes ago, Seth said:

but workload to keep it officially active probably wasn't worth it. 

Having LC tours just meant there were a bit less tours of other tiers so I don't see why its more work for staff. However having less tours of other tiers that fill more is a valid reason, although with time, we can see that it doesn't hold much when these tiers face the same issues now as LC back then - even though they have matchmaking tool which LC never had which definitely increase playerbase of a tier. 

 

The prizes used to be a lot shittier even for level 50 standards, now that they buffed them a bit, they would probably be ok semi-comps just like the lvl 50s ones depending on the mon (still a bad reward for winning a tournament/farming ladder points). 

 

I think one of the reasons it got removed is also that they didn't like LC taking too much place in the calendar of events - because it wasn't taking "as much place" as other tiers, thanks to YettoDie, we had a lot automated tournaments player hosted because he was the only one to use that function (which is still possible afaik and no one uses it). I remember facing difficulties trying to host one before it was removed. The band-aid of players from the community trying to fix the lack of commitment from devs towards the tier (no matchmaking, no Pokedex tier list, no visibility of the tier in game outside tournaments) is probably and ironically what made it removed. Lol

[OrangeManiac]

I just don't understand the "all or nothing" mentality behind either having LC "as a tier" or completely nuking it from the game. Was LC representation notably lower than other lower tiers? Yep. Was LC taken less seriously by the general playerbase? It seems that way. But why was the solution to remove it from the game completely, though? I understand the smaller representation but what's wrong with recognizing LC a gimmick tier in comparison to OU/UU/NU/Dubs and give it slightly smaller representation in the scheduling calendar? Why would it be bad to host at least occasionally a tournament here and there to give LC enthusiasts something to do and something to build for?

 

 

[LeZenor]

1 hour ago, razimove said:

Im pretty sure there were 16 seats that didnt fill a lot of times, especially on EU mornings, I remember pretty well buying entire LC comp boxes and then taking a while to find myself a tournament I could join at those hours, this was probably before the chinese started to join the server, cant really say much after as I didnt bother with it after.

Community Combats and Yetto’s Taillow Time hosted during mostly EU timezones did fail to fill 16-seat tours by the end of LC and at that point we would only see the same players actually playing in them.

 

I think most of the reasoning behind the decision were stated in their official statement at the time and in my opinion, still holds up to this day. As far as we’re concerned, none of the reasons listed in caos’ post were actual reasons given by staff except for point number 3. The rest is all speculations. We can debate why LC “failed“ as a tier but that is not to be confused with what prompted the staff to remove it

 

 

 

 

Edited February 2 by LeZenor

[Seth]

13 minutes ago, Poufilou said:

Having LC tours just meant there were a bit less tours of other tiers so I don't see why its more work for staff. However having less tours of other tiers that fill more is a valid reason, although with time, we can see that it doesn't hold much when these tiers face the same issues now as LC back then - even though they have matchmaking tool which LC never had which definitely increase playerbase of a tier. 

That's the TLDR, it wasn't meant specifically for tournaments. In general, the overall workload wasn't worth it considering the amount of players who played the tier seriously. 

I can't tell whether having a matchmaking tool would increase the amount of players for LC, considering that players already struggle with NU/UU mons already, and these mons are generally more used throughout the game (even in OU sometimes) compared to LC mons that can only be used for that particular thing.

 

13 minutes ago, Poufilou said:

I think one of the reasons it got removed is also that they didn't like LC taking too much place in the calendar of events - because it wasn't taking "as much place" as other tiers, thanks to YettoDie, we had a lot automated tournaments player hosted because he was the only one to use that function (which is still possible afaik and no one uses it). I remember facing difficulties trying to host one before it was removed. The band-aid of players from the community trying to fix the lack of commitment from devs towards the tier (no matchmaking, no Pokedex tier list, no visibility of the tier in game outside tournaments) is probably and ironically what made it removed. Lol

Personally I would have loved to see this tier thrive and grow, but isn't this pure speculation that the failure of growth comes down to visibility? Even NU and UU are struggling now - and as also written in my other text above - the NU/UU mons can be used outside of LC tier. 

[Poufilou]

12 minutes ago, Seth said:

Personally I would have loved to see this tier thrive and grow, but isn't this pure speculation that the failure of growth comes down to visibility? Even NU and UU are struggling now - and as also written in my other text above - the NU/UU mons can be used outside of LC tier. 

No it's not speculation, when matchmaking was reworked UU and NU and Doubles got whole more playerbase and it was seen. Same for the other tools that are conveniency for pvp players (pokedex data + filters) but also serve as window for casual players into competitive scene. I've been hosting unofficial LC tours and first thing countless players asked me is where can I see the list of all pokemons I can play ? And told me they would love / would have love to get into it if it was easier to obtain the most basic informations or didn't feel like "that one tier where I need to look up stuff in obscure forum posts/private discord servers". When I say lack of commitment, it's just for those basic things. I can understand how difficult it would be to implement visibility about how level 5 battling changes for stats or whatever would have made the tier more attractive and intuitive. 

[Shadow]

52 minutes ago, Seth said:

That's the TLDR, it wasn't meant specifically for tournaments. In general, the overall workload wasn't worth it considering the amount of players who played the tier seriously. 

I can't tell whether having a matchmaking tool would increase the amount of players for LC, considering that players already struggle with NU/UU mons already, and these mons are generally more used throughout the game (even in OU sometimes) compared to LC mons that can only be used for that particular thing.

 

Personally I would have loved to see this tier thrive and grow, but isn't this pure speculation that the failure of growth comes down to visibility? Even NU and UU are struggling now - and as also written in my other text above - the NU/UU mons can be used outside of LC tier. 

To be fair, imo LC is way better in players' hands than in staff's. The only disadvantages we have are that we can't regularly put shiny prizes like any official event can do and that it relies in a handful of players who moderate the tier according to the meta situation. If those players have no replacement, we're doomed.

Edit: Thanks a lot to Yetto, Pouf, and everyone who contributes to the prizes and the tier itself 🫂

Edited February 2 by Shadow

[caioxlive13]

9 hours ago, Shadow said:

To be fair, imo LC is way better in players' hands than in staff's.

I'd say that the unofficial meta playerbase as a whole proved that if the format is more in gimmick nature it's better in the Players' hands, preferable the ones that play the format and has experience, than in the staffs' one. We've seen it with LC: after going out of staff control and became controlled by players, it became far more stable, in the teambuilding and in tiering. I'm even risking on saying that LC is far more stable than Doubles and OU right now, two metas knowed by being very stable. I'd support LC and other formats being Semi-officials(They would be there and able to do Community hosted stuff there, also listed to help the duels being called easily without worring about any possible mistake, but when comes to tiering, TC take part if they want, but they're not forced onto doing so if they not wish. ), because i know official are not possible. 

[Shadow]

48 minutes ago, caioxlive13 said:

I'd say that the unofficial meta playerbase as a whole proved that if the format is more in gimmick nature it's better in the Players' hands, preferable the ones that play the format and has experience, than in the staffs' one. We've seen it with LC: after going out of staff control and became controlled by players, it became far more stable, in the teambuilding and in tiering. I'm even risking on saying that LC is far more stable than Doubles and OU right now, two metas knowed by being very stable. I'd support LC and other formats being Semi-officials(They would be there and able to do Community hosted stuff there, also listed to help the duels being called easily without worring about any possible mistake, but when comes to tiering, TC take part if they want, but they're not forced onto doing so if they not wish. ), because i know official are not possible. 

Ideally, i'd like devs to provide us with some prizes while they don't moderate the tier, but this is obviously not realistic, in the end, dreams, dreams are.

[JurassicMick]

Man I thought this mayo would be spicier but I feel like certain someone just throw the rock and ran away smh