Why are we limiting OU move variety so much with arbitrary rules?
At minimum tradeback moves should be allowed in OU and no-tradebacks could replace it as the niche unofficial format for those who want to reminisce the 2,5 year window between 96-99 before tradeback moves were introduced. Some of the players weren't even born before that window, let alone play competitive pokemon at that time. We have had 24,5 years of time to adjust to Gamefreak giving pokemon a bit more move variety. If Showdown was an official game with official Nintendo tournaments, they would obviously not ban us from using these moves. Previous tests have shown that the metagame doesn't drastically change with these moves, and it certainly doesn't change for the worse.
Long time ago people thought that Hypno would be S tier and the metagame would revolve around beating the crazy boosting pokemon, when in reality the best pokemon are still Snorlax/Tauros/Chansey, and Slowbro has even been argued to remain the best Amnesia user by top players. The number of viable pokemon in OU is increased by a few, while no-one really drops out, increasing the variety of pokemon a bit. Snorlax becomes the best pokemon, but its playrate doesn't even increase since its literally 100% already, it just has more move variety.
I'd also like to see OHKO moves allowed given a real test. Frankly, many of the arguments I've seen for keeping them banned seem to revolve around not understanding how they work, fearing that they would be too powerful or being concerned about the RNG aspect, but we have stuff like Chansey/Snorlax freeze wars which are 50-50 coinflips and if anything, that's where OHKO moves could help a bit. OHKO moves might see a bit of fringe play for specifically breaking through the most passive Snorlax and Chansey sets. Rhydon trying to kill a reflect Chansey with Horn Drill is IMO not more BS than Rhydon trying to kill it with FP chains and 7.8% crits. Or keeping it unparalyzed and trying to freeze war it instead. What is more dumb is that pokemon like Rhydon have literally 4 moves worth using, when they could have a viable additional option.
But again, I really don't think OHKO moves would be used much and I assume that their impact would likely be minimal, just increasing variety slightly. I don't think they have been given a real test with good players to see where their usage would end up in practice. Even if it's higher than expected though, the biggest losers are undoubtedly Chansey and Snorlax.
Ideally I would personally also like to see Fly and Dig allowed. Fly might be a viable move for Aerodactyl for example, again increasing move variety in the game a tiny bit. I understand that allowing them is a bit more controversial though. I remember this being debated long ago, and the arguments in favor of banning them are certainly more solid than banning tradeback and OHKO moves. And as always, we decided to limit our options to make the game 0.01% worse when we could make it 0.01% better.
I'd really want the mentality to change from limiting our options as much as possible to increasing them as much as we can.
