Should an ideal metagame allow for every playstyle to be viable?

[wolf]

To clarify, I'm referring to the five main playstyles: hyper offense, bulky offense, balance, semi-stall, and stall. Would you consider it to be ideal if every playstyle could used with nearly the same amounts of success? Do you think that it would be too varied and overwhelming to deal with for teams (too many common playstyles and Pokemon to prepare for)? ORAS OU (pre-Hoopa) is a decent example of this.

On the contrary, is it ideal for a metagame to be heavily centralized around a playstyle or Pokemon? XY OU w/ Aegislash and Mega Mawile is a good example. This would allow for easier team building due to the fewer threats, and could allow for more creativity due to the larger amount of freedom with the rest of the team slots. The downside is, of course, fewer viable playstyles and Pokemon because of the centralization.

Additionally, is a Pokemon overpowered if it puts an entire playstyle to a very significant disadvantage? e.g. Gothitelle or Manaphy vs stall and Rock Polish Landorus-I and Gen 5 Excadrill vs hyper offense. (RP Lando-I may not be that good but it was just an example.)

Sorry if my rambling doesn't make much sense haha.

 

[Dark Azelf]

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/the-current-state-of-oras-ou.3547120/#post-6381391

This post basically sums up anything i want to say on the topic. Most notably this part

When push comes to shove and you have to pick between the two, the one Pokemon is probably worth getting rid of if it has such a noteworthy impact on a metagame that a whole style of play is no longer worth using. If we were to let stall, semi-stall, and passive bulkier teams in general deteriorate in viability while letting Pokemon with few or even no checks like Hoopa-Unbound remain in the tier, then what would stop OU from turning into a "broken checks broken" tier? Generally speaking, a lot of people say that a necessary trait of a balanced metagame is that every playstyle is useable and if we want ORAS OU to reach that point, then we can't let something like Hoopa-Unbound play this role in shaping the metagame and how viable entire playstyles are, in my opinion.

 

[Anti]

This is a good discussion topic and I have a ton of thoughts on this. I might add this thread to the OP as it is a very thorough take on this topic (albeit with a slightly different focus).

The relevant characteristic from the above thread is variety. Variety is increasing with each generation as more and more viable Pokemon are introduced. Really, you can forget about the individual Pokemon even--just look at playstyle variety itself. The stall-offense spectrum has certainly been growing wider with each passing generation, in large part because power creep makes teams of sweepers more viable. I think the first "modern" metagame in this respect was DP or DPP. The "hyper offense" of Advance and the hyper offense of ORAS barely resemble each other, and I think the reason for that is pretty simple: more and stronger/better threats. (This also applies to defensive Pokemon, who have tools like Regenerator, Foul Play, Prankster, Poison Heal, etc. that didn't exist even a few generations ago.) The increasing variety of styles has characterized the game just as the increasing variety of Pokemon has.

I'm not a fan of tiering to "protect playstyles." Pokemon is growing more match-up based, but match-up is still very much secondary to the plays you make in a given battle. When it isn't, this is often from poor team-building, not impossible team-building, though exceptions like Rain vs. most hyper offenses do come to mind. That said, I think it's foolish to remove Mega Gardevoir because slow teams have a very difficult time checking it or legislating Excadrill out of the game because fast teams have very few counterplays to it. Styles don't determine match-ups: teams do. Mega Metagross "destroys balance" but isn't going to be accomplishing much against balances with Mega Slowbro and/or Scizor. I would only want to ban something if its strong match-ups are so extreme that it transcends this team-specific element. I think Hoopa-Unbound does this, so I would ban it, but it seems like a pretty exceptional Pokemon to me. Conversely, I don't think something like Manaphy does this, though it is arguably broken on other merits besides it lessening the viability of stall/balance teams (though certainly not removing their viability).

Just to give one more example, I wouldn't want to try to ban stuff to make stall a better play style in ORAS. At some point, you have to work with the Pokemon you're given. ORAS is more inherently offensive just like GSC is more inherently defensive. I don't think this is some disease to be treated. Style versatility is great, but we don't need to baby everything from stall to offense and try to doctor the metagame to make it well-suited to everything.

 

[Zeffy]

A metagame with every play style having the same chances of success would be a bit chaotic, don't you think? There's variety, yes, but since Pokemon involves over 300+ possible choices of individual Pokemon (not counting NFEs and other unviable shit like Stantler), this brings out the fact that the average player should have a) a lot of knowledge on how most, if not all, individual Pokemon and play styles work and b) a lot of experience to be able to instinctively act when casually playing matches.

Having tiers alleviate this information overload problem, so we at least have that going for us.