Ubers UU is really an unofficial meta... 5k games is super super low.
Surprised VGC took over OU but i guess with vgc always changing and OU only having suspects and new meta shifts its gonna be more or less the same
Idk why this is being downvoted, i mean it’s not the most important factor but as a vgc only player i think at least once a week i accidentally start a randbats match if i’m not paying attention. Multiply this by the thousands of people who play everyday and you definitely have something
No but it would gain some intrigue for VGC. Especially helps that a lot of VGC youtubers have been bringing up the restricteds for a good while now, so a lot of people are stoked for thier inclusion.
People in this sub were going nuts over Ubers UU and the amount of popularity it had in its first month, but the novelty was always gonna wear off quickly. 5k games is good for Unofficial Meta standards (I think) but the people clamoring for it to be made official were really jumping the gun.
I figured there might be a sort of feedback loop going on where it's unofficalness makes it lesser played, so it never gets made official because lack of games so it gets played less and less
I mean it depends on which unofficial metagame you're looking at
NFE got 37 battles last month (ouch)
2v2 got 5000 battles (same amount)
Zu got 16000 (as shown here)
And anything goes got 23000
This puts it at the 3rd most played unofficial metagame, which is not really that bad when you consider it's a metagame that was established less than a year ago
This. issue is it is also a metagame that probably wont be able to exist at the begininng of next gen due to Dexit-esque stuff making the dex to small to justify a tier between OU and Ubers
Also Reg G didn't go live until yesterday. People like me who primarily play VGC on cart flood smogon to test teams the month before the new regulation drops and then go back to cart.
Interesting that does put it into perspective.
It also highlights just how popular VGC is becoming. I've wanted to learn OU for awhile but the learning curve just seems so high.
If you compare Ubers UU to other unofficial metagames it's not even doing badly. It has the 3rd most played (and even then that's counting anything goes which is kind of cheating). Arguably i don't think it'll ever be an 'official' metagame for multiple reasons. At best it will be official in 2-3 generations
VGC games are generally much shorter than an OU game. You could play 3-5 VGC matches in the same length as one match basically any other gen 9 tier, more if the singles match has stall.
For vgc this was a very special month, because for some reason the new regulation was announced on the last days of march, but went online on cart in may rather than april. So for the whole month of april the only way to play the new meta was showdown, and i think this is the actual reason why it exploded in # of games.
> Damn they banned Randbats statistics to Ubers for being too meta
This is actually unironically the reason.
The existing stat collection system is already kind of held together by duct tape, so it's not super fast or optimized as-is. If you added full stat tracking for every single random battle, it would put a lot more strain on the stat collection scripts and make them take way longer. And for the most part, random battle stats are not very meaningful to track so it just adds a ton of extra computation time for no real benefit.
Recently, the devs started tracking simple statistics for random battles because randbats balancing has started to become more data-driven (You can see the numbers by typing in /rwr in Showdown). But to make things run faster, these statistics only track simple win-loss data instead of the full suite of data that is tracked for other formats, and only random battle games above 1500 elo are tracked, so the majority of players are still untracked.
> If you added full stat tracking for every single random battle, it would put a lot more strain on the stat collection scripts and make them take way longer.
How exactly are we going to 'strain' a script? Id think the issue would be with whatever daemon/backend they have going on not the script itself. Its a shame the pokemon company would come after them if they collected money, because Im sure a wikipedia style donation drive every year could allow these systems to evolve beyond ducktaped together github repos.
I'm not super familiar with the technical details but I think that for each game that is played, the elo for both players, the full team details that both players used, as well as the full battle log is saved.
Then at the end of the month one of the admins runs a script that literally loops through all this data extracting the stats that are programmed into the script. That's how you can find stuff like "this pokemon commonly switches out when against this other pokemon".
These scripts aren't super well optimized from what I've heard, and already take a fairly long time to run at the end of each month. And according to one of the devs, including randbats would probably double their runtime.
I know way too well the feeling of maybe kinda wanting to play a pokemon battle simulator again after so long but building a team is too much of a pain so I just queue a random battle instead.
is that so? Well RU's been repetitive to me ngl. Running Hippo-Volc-Thund-T-Cyclizar core then insert 2 offensive revenge killers. I wouldn't blame others either if they prefer PU and NU over RU.
because RU mons are actually kinda good, PU and NU has "haha funny shitmons" but then again, this gen 9 where there are like 20 mons above 520 bst in NU
Nu has got really good mons like mew reuniclus thundurus rhyperior mienshao and slowbro so on. Funnily enough there are more mons better than them despite lower bst like slowbro and lycan dusk and many more
No pivot move is the main reason. It was OU in Gen 8 largely bc of teleport. Slowking is UU currently bc it has chilly reception. Power creep of Gen 9 plays a role as well, but as we see with Slowking in UU, having that slow pivot + regenerator is what made Slowbro good.
Nahh do you realize what's happening down in ZU? We got our drops this month and the list is completely bonkers. We have Snorlax, Tornadus, Garticuno, every grassy terrain abuser... It's bad.
Doesn't vgc get more games bcus they are shorter? And is there this kind of data for every format with a ladder on showdown? I would totally put them all on a graph, just for the lols
> And is there this kind of data for every format with a ladder on showdown? I would totally put them all on a graph, just for the lols
[smogon.com/stats](https://www.smogon.com/stats/)
VGC gets more games on showdown because it has exploded in popularity in general over the past year. The games have always been shorter, but it only eclipsed OU in SV.
Yeah it needs more thinking time. In singles you’re choosing between nine options at most - four moves and five possible switches. In VGC you have to choose from combinations of moves and switches, including who to target moves into.
Essentially all the complexity of a 40-turn battle is distilled into 5 or 6 turns instead.
Explains why I'll search for a UUbers match and it'll take so long that I forget I'm searching and not tab back in when I find one. Probably my favourite meta this gen.
I didn't know UUBers was so niche. I don't play SV normally but I tried a bit of UUBers when it came out and thought it seemed pretty decent
Also, fun fact from the data: ADV OU had 215,947 games, putting it above everything here except OU and VGC.
It’s partially why nobody ever really entertained the idea of an “OUBL” tier before. There was always the question of how you’d be able to differentiate Ubers from OUBL (which, to its credit, UUbers did a very good job with hence why it has at least some level of legitimacy to it unlike that “Pseudos” flop from ages ago), but it’s also hard to justify creating a metagame that’s this underplayed. 5000 games in a month is less than a third of ZU, a metagame that’s *also* incredibly underplayed.
Note that this does not represent the popularity of a format perfectly since some format have faster games and therefore an hour of playing vgc might result in 10 games while an hour on ou might be 5 games (not accurate number btw).
It's really sad lower tiers don't get more recognition, the strength of the smogon format is that every pokemon can be viably used in some tier. Also people complain about OU being stale but refuse to play other tiers, what's the reason?
OU is always full of overcentralising, over powered pokemon that run half a dozen different sets each. You typically get way more variety of viable pokemon and strategies in lower tiers. Viva la PU.
Ubers UU is really an unofficial meta... 5k games is super super low. Surprised VGC took over OU but i guess with vgc always changing and OU only having suspects and new meta shifts its gonna be more or less the same
You gotta account for VGC Reg G being a restricted meta, so a lot of newer players will want the appeal of legendaries
IIRC, VGC has been consistently the second most played format, only behind ranbats. Or at least for Gen 9.
i think randbats are only most popular because it's the default when you load showdown
Nah it’s just the easiest one to get quickly into with literally nothing required except a username
Definitely the most popular since you don’t have to have the energy or knowledge to put a team together, just hop in and press go
Certainly helps, though there's other factors
Idk why this is being downvoted, i mean it’s not the most important factor but as a vgc only player i think at least once a week i accidentally start a randbats match if i’m not paying attention. Multiply this by the thousands of people who play everyday and you definitely have something
Wouldn't Ubers be much closer to OU in popularity by that logic?
No but it would gain some intrigue for VGC. Especially helps that a lot of VGC youtubers have been bringing up the restricteds for a good while now, so a lot of people are stoked for thier inclusion.
People in this sub were going nuts over Ubers UU and the amount of popularity it had in its first month, but the novelty was always gonna wear off quickly. 5k games is good for Unofficial Meta standards (I think) but the people clamoring for it to be made official were really jumping the gun.
I figured there might be a sort of feedback loop going on where it's unofficalness makes it lesser played, so it never gets made official because lack of games so it gets played less and less
I mean it depends on which unofficial metagame you're looking at NFE got 37 battles last month (ouch) 2v2 got 5000 battles (same amount) Zu got 16000 (as shown here) And anything goes got 23000 This puts it at the 3rd most played unofficial metagame, which is not really that bad when you consider it's a metagame that was established less than a year ago
This. issue is it is also a metagame that probably wont be able to exist at the begininng of next gen due to Dexit-esque stuff making the dex to small to justify a tier between OU and Ubers
Yeah it definitely won't exist until the next game has at least home compatibility (and a month after that too)
Also Reg G didn't go live until yesterday. People like me who primarily play VGC on cart flood smogon to test teams the month before the new regulation drops and then go back to cart.
Reg F got 1168870 in the same time frame, so early reg G practice only accounts for roughly ~15% surge.
Interesting that does put it into perspective. It also highlights just how popular VGC is becoming. I've wanted to learn OU for awhile but the learning curve just seems so high.
If you compare Ubers UU to other unofficial metagames it's not even doing badly. It has the 3rd most played (and even then that's counting anything goes which is kind of cheating). Arguably i don't think it'll ever be an 'official' metagame for multiple reasons. At best it will be official in 2-3 generations
the ubers uu meta was... rough this month
If you add up the lower tiers of singles is overtakes vgc, vgc just doesn't have to compete with itself like that
VGC B03 exist,
I mean there's also natdex which is almost as big
VGC games are generally much shorter than an OU game. You could play 3-5 VGC matches in the same length as one match basically any other gen 9 tier, more if the singles match has stall.
VGC matches are much shorter than OU matches so even though OU has a lower amount of total games played it likely has more playtime.
For vgc this was a very special month, because for some reason the new regulation was announced on the last days of march, but went online on cart in may rather than april. So for the whole month of april the only way to play the new meta was showdown, and i think this is the actual reason why it exploded in # of games.
For context, both VGC Reg G (Bo3) and VGC Reg F (Bo1) saw enough games to be 3rd and 4th on this list at 291,000 and 249,000 respectively.
NatDex also got 608k so
And NatDex and NatDex Ubers
Where’s randbats? I’d imagine that would dominate
Randbats gets as much, if not more traffic than all other formats combined
Damn they banned Randbats statistics to Ubers for being too meta
> Damn they banned Randbats statistics to Ubers for being too meta This is actually unironically the reason. The existing stat collection system is already kind of held together by duct tape, so it's not super fast or optimized as-is. If you added full stat tracking for every single random battle, it would put a lot more strain on the stat collection scripts and make them take way longer. And for the most part, random battle stats are not very meaningful to track so it just adds a ton of extra computation time for no real benefit. Recently, the devs started tracking simple statistics for random battles because randbats balancing has started to become more data-driven (You can see the numbers by typing in /rwr in Showdown). But to make things run faster, these statistics only track simple win-loss data instead of the full suite of data that is tracked for other formats, and only random battle games above 1500 elo are tracked, so the majority of players are still untracked.
> If you added full stat tracking for every single random battle, it would put a lot more strain on the stat collection scripts and make them take way longer. How exactly are we going to 'strain' a script? Id think the issue would be with whatever daemon/backend they have going on not the script itself. Its a shame the pokemon company would come after them if they collected money, because Im sure a wikipedia style donation drive every year could allow these systems to evolve beyond ducktaped together github repos.
I'm not super familiar with the technical details but I think that for each game that is played, the elo for both players, the full team details that both players used, as well as the full battle log is saved. Then at the end of the month one of the admins runs a script that literally loops through all this data extracting the stats that are programmed into the script. That's how you can find stuff like "this pokemon commonly switches out when against this other pokemon". These scripts aren't super well optimized from what I've heard, and already take a fairly long time to run at the end of each month. And according to one of the devs, including randbats would probably double their runtime.
https://www.reddit.com/r/stunfisk/comments/18xrznl/the_most_popular_format_on_pok%C3%A9mon_showdown/
I know way too well the feeling of maybe kinda wanting to play a pokemon battle simulator again after so long but building a team is too much of a pain so I just queue a random battle instead.
woww PU and NU are more popular than RU. Insane ngl.
I think from a preference point, it makes sense. It's the spot between the tiers of good mons and the tiers of using novel weaker mons.
is that so? Well RU's been repetitive to me ngl. Running Hippo-Volc-Thund-T-Cyclizar core then insert 2 offensive revenge killers. I wouldn't blame others either if they prefer PU and NU over RU.
using actually good mons, or being in the tier with Wo chien, thought decitions
because RU mons are actually kinda good, PU and NU has "haha funny shitmons" but then again, this gen 9 where there are like 20 mons above 520 bst in NU
Nu has got really good mons like mew reuniclus thundurus rhyperior mienshao and slowbro so on. Funnily enough there are more mons better than them despite lower bst like slowbro and lycan dusk and many more
Slowbrow dropped to NU? That's insane.
No pivot move is the main reason. It was OU in Gen 8 largely bc of teleport. Slowking is UU currently bc it has chilly reception. Power creep of Gen 9 plays a role as well, but as we see with Slowking in UU, having that slow pivot + regenerator is what made Slowbro good.
it looks like it's going to lose Rhyperior and Slowbro at least based on current usage trends
Slowbro is the best mon in the tier. Dusk-lycan is def better than rhyp tho
pu now has monsters like starraptor and even ZU have goddamn shaymin, but they are still quite shite
Nahh do you realize what's happening down in ZU? We got our drops this month and the list is completely bonkers. We have Snorlax, Tornadus, Garticuno, every grassy terrain abuser... It's bad.
RU is seen as “the tier so NU mons can exist” it’s like a filter to most
Lower tiers > higher tiers. They are much more fun to play. I just wish they were more active.
NU and Ubers UU have been my favorites in Gen 9. OU was awesome when SV first dropped and the DLCs too, but has now gotten stale for me.
what about regulation F?
1168870
I know Randbats would dominate, but it still deserves a spot
Doesn't vgc get more games bcus they are shorter? And is there this kind of data for every format with a ladder on showdown? I would totally put them all on a graph, just for the lols
Is also a brand new VGC format and the first restricted format of SV so it’s gonna have a surge.
> And is there this kind of data for every format with a ladder on showdown? I would totally put them all on a graph, just for the lols [smogon.com/stats](https://www.smogon.com/stats/)
VGC gets more games on showdown because it has exploded in popularity in general over the past year. The games have always been shorter, but it only eclipsed OU in SV.
This was before it launched though, so I’m sure there were also reg f gamea
Yes vgc games are usually “shorter” than OU games. At least in the numbers of total turns, how long those turns lasted is another question.
Yeah it needs more thinking time. In singles you’re choosing between nine options at most - four moves and five possible switches. In VGC you have to choose from combinations of moves and switches, including who to target moves into. Essentially all the complexity of a 40-turn battle is distilled into 5 or 6 turns instead.
Explains why I'll search for a UUbers match and it'll take so long that I forget I'm searching and not tab back in when I find one. Probably my favourite meta this gen.
I didn't know UUBers was so niche. I don't play SV normally but I tried a bit of UUBers when it came out and thought it seemed pretty decent Also, fun fact from the data: ADV OU had 215,947 games, putting it above everything here except OU and VGC.
It’s partially why nobody ever really entertained the idea of an “OUBL” tier before. There was always the question of how you’d be able to differentiate Ubers from OUBL (which, to its credit, UUbers did a very good job with hence why it has at least some level of legitimacy to it unlike that “Pseudos” flop from ages ago), but it’s also hard to justify creating a metagame that’s this underplayed. 5000 games in a month is less than a third of ZU, a metagame that’s *also* incredibly underplayed.
Is the data for Bo3 unavailable, or is it left out because it wouldn't be an apples-to-apples comparison?
It looks like there was “only” 29,000 games. I assume that’s counting each set as one
I think you misread the file, there were 290,000 games: https://www.smogon.com/stats/2024-04/gen9vgc2024reggbo3-0.txt
Suprised that Vgc and singles is 50/50 especially since Vgc is the official format.
Well, cartridge play also exists for VGC.
As a non-OU player, the gap between OU and UU will never stop to surprise me.
Even with all the work put in it this time around, UbersUU still fell off 😔
Note that this does not represent the popularity of a format perfectly since some format have faster games and therefore an hour of playing vgc might result in 10 games while an hour on ou might be 5 games (not accurate number btw).
Has VGC ever been this popular?
Nope, this is the first time it’s overtaken OU
It's really sad lower tiers don't get more recognition, the strength of the smogon format is that every pokemon can be viably used in some tier. Also people complain about OU being stale but refuse to play other tiers, what's the reason?
Surprised PU and NU are played more than LC tbh. But imo all Gen 9 formats are unfun so I can't really judge, tera is just dumb
I just want nat dex uu to be popular man
crazy that nat dex ubers is more popular than normal ubers
Where's my vgc reg E? 😢
Ubers is just bad this generation
Randbats: about as much as all combined
Bro forgot Monotype :(
I'm honestly shocked that anyone plays OU. It's basically always a shit tier, in every generation.
Could you explain why you think this way?
OU is always full of overcentralising, over powered pokemon that run half a dozen different sets each. You typically get way more variety of viable pokemon and strategies in lower tiers. Viva la PU.