Why aren't in-game team rates allowed?

Question

Putting up the rationale for this, so others can discuss/critique and people can link it.

This covers posts like "final member for my SwSh team?" and anything else where listing out all members of the team is essential to the question.

Answer 1

1. Honest advice conflicts with personal preferences
   • Most people use Pokemon on their in-game team that they personally like. This makes sense and is completely understandable. However, it presents an issue for us: we can only advise people on what is objectively efficient for a playthrough, not on their personal tastes.
   • Many Pokemon that people like (and perceive to be good) are ackshually poor choices for in-game teams. For example, Lucario is a bad choice for Sinnoh playthroughs because you need to level it from an egg after getting your sixth badge. There are plenty of similar Pokemon that perform just as well, arrive sooner, and have no grinding involved. But people will use Lucario anyway because they like it -- nothing wrong with that, but those people are also going to be disappointed/irritated when our honest advice is to drop it from the team.
   • As discussed below, we already tried "letting go" and allowing the questions to run their course anyway. The results were very mixed, with a lot of wishy-washy opinionated answers and a hint of "thanks but not like that".
2. Nobody's way of playing Pokemon is wrong
   • Pokemon is a role-playing game. Everyone has a preferred way to play it, and most of those won't prevent you from winning the game and having fun. So who's to say our "efficient" advice is correct? Grinding Lucario isn't going to stop you from beating Cynthia, and for some people, it might even be fun. So what's the issue? Why are we so uptight?
   • The only way this works is if we agree that advice intended to make the playthrough efficient and hassle-free is the most helpful advice. This is easy to do for competitive teams where most people's goal is to win, but for in-game teams, it's very difficult to have this agreement.
   • Some people might appreciate "efficient" advice or be willing to compromise somewhere, but the unspoken line-thou-shall-not-cross exists somewhere different for every person. It's not worth figuring that out for the sake of people who don't want to evolve Marshtomp because it's cute but also want advice on beating Steven (real example).
   • There are many examples of this conflict. Here's a big one: it is better to use less Pokemon on your team. The same amount of experience required to get six level 50s can get you three level 62s, which reduces grinding dramatically. However, most people don't realise this or prefer to use six Pokemon anyway, which conflicts with our honest advice on how to do a hassle-free playthrough ("drop these two mons because you don't need them").
   • Here's another: do you try not to have any type overlaps in your playthrough teams? If you're honest with yourself, you only do that because you like it that way, not because having Gyarados and Staraptor will foreseeably cause you any hassle.
3. People aren't specific about what the team is actually for
   • Usually, it's obvious when people have given us a planned/in-progress playthrough team (there's a starter, the Pokemon can be caught on routes pre-National Dex, etc). However, we often get other posts where it's harder to decipher.
   • Real example: somebody asks you to rate their Sw/Sh team with Slowbro, Shiftry, Mienshao, Gastrodon, Dragonite, and Marowak. Where do you even start? Is this a Battle Tower team? If so, it sucks and our honest advice should be to use Ultra Beasts and pseudo-legends instead (disappointment/irritation ensues). Is this a team for battling a friend? If so, what battle format? There is no answer to that question -- they're just casual players who don't care about that stuff. So, what kind of advice does this person actually want? What is its value to other people?
   • How do you give advice to someone who just wants to "battle trainers" and doesn't reply when you ask what that means? The reality is most people make these teams because they like them and want to admire them. There is no specific purpose at all.
4. The questions have low reusability
   • Because in-game teams are individualistic by nature, it's unlikely that you'll read somebody else's "final member for my ORAS team?" or "Pokemon A vs. B for my team?" post and get a satisfying answer for your own team. This reduces their value to us and our platform generally.
   • The current rule suggests people to ask general questions like "Pokemon A vs. B for Emerald playthroughs?" instead. These aren't team-restricted and are more likely to help many people. We've collected stats on question view counts that strongly indicate these more "general" questions reach more people.
   • A lot of in-game team advice is reducible to a few specific topics, like we've started doing here, here, and here. Feel free to suggest more.
5. We used to allow these questions... they were meh
   • Here's an endless stream of old in-game team questions, most of which we wouldn't allow nowadays. Tell me honestly if you like reading these? And how many of them were made better for including the author's team, instead of just asking a general question?
   • These were consistently the most unwieldy PokeBase threads, with significant variance in the quality of the answers. Some of them were pretty good (mostly the ones that ask for help with a specific problem), but others are a little bit "Thank You but Please suggest some other Team members ASAP" and "i want to have a creative team" and "I’m using it for unofficial stuff just answer as if they weren’t mega". The current rule lets us keep most of the good with none of the bad.

Comments

It might be a good idea to move reason #4 to the top, so the people who just want information about Pokemon and don't care about history or philosophy can get that information more easily.