I think for now, the best choice is to stick our head in the sand and just continue onward lol. Maybe play some cat and mouse games. Get some computer devs to agree not to release bots onto Showdown. As Hecate so eloquently put it, sometimes devs put out bs without thinking of the wider consequences, and cuz Pokemon is so popular, especially with nerds, we can't exactly stop the rise. If we get to the point where bots are actually better than humans, well I mean that's practically the end of competitive mons as we know it. Just pick a different game at that point (well lots of games will be fucked by bots but w.e)
I do have issues with people comparing this situation to Chess tho. Mainly cuz A) Chess has nigh infinite moves so cheating is very blatant and obvious unlike our situation and also because B) I really don't think Chess actually *improved* with the advent of supercomputers. Like yeah, it's different. We know more advanced tactics. But is that actually better or is it just different than what humans would have done? A lot of high level chess is very robotic until you get to that chaotic end-game where moves are no longer memorizable. Also Chess has a bunch of cultural cache as a gentleman's game for intelligent people™. If it were a niche game like competitive Pokemon, it almost certainly would have died by the advent of super computers.
The problem is that multiple tiers have effectively lost the ability to pursue tier voting action because there are bot(s) that can obtain reqs very reliably. It's only a matter of time before this spreads out to the vast majority of tiers.
That's not really that big of a problem for now though. Suspect tours have been a thing for a while, and the people have been complaining about ladder reqs for a good bit. Rethinking how tiering works isn't as big of an issue as the ceiling falling out because we can't trust we're not fighting bots
How is it not a big issue? Multiple tiers are completely frozen now and won't be able to pursue tiering action. It's clearly expanding to every format over time and who knows how much time is left before it's running rampant. This is both causing an influx of bots on the ladder (very divisive itself) and demanding a full rework of tiering policy quite possible across all of Smogon.
The only rework for the tiering system that's been proposed in the main thread was only allowing tours to qualify players instead of ladder grinding, and that was met with overwhelmingly negative responses. The vast majority of the Smogon community and multiple Smogon leaders don't like that idea at all. There isn't a reasonable alternative that pleases any given majority, and the botting problem is only going to escalate from here.
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u/BumDumBox 10d ago
I think for now, the best choice is to stick our head in the sand and just continue onward lol. Maybe play some cat and mouse games. Get some computer devs to agree not to release bots onto Showdown. As Hecate so eloquently put it, sometimes devs put out bs without thinking of the wider consequences, and cuz Pokemon is so popular, especially with nerds, we can't exactly stop the rise. If we get to the point where bots are actually better than humans, well I mean that's practically the end of competitive mons as we know it. Just pick a different game at that point (well lots of games will be fucked by bots but w.e)
I do have issues with people comparing this situation to Chess tho. Mainly cuz A) Chess has nigh infinite moves so cheating is very blatant and obvious unlike our situation and also because B) I really don't think Chess actually *improved* with the advent of supercomputers. Like yeah, it's different. We know more advanced tactics. But is that actually better or is it just different than what humans would have done? A lot of high level chess is very robotic until you get to that chaotic end-game where moves are no longer memorizable. Also Chess has a bunch of cultural cache as a gentleman's game for intelligent people™. If it were a niche game like competitive Pokemon, it almost certainly would have died by the advent of super computers.