Policy Review An Adjustment in Direction

Status
Not open for further replies.

HeaLnDeaL

Let's Keep Fighting
is an Artistis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a CAP Contributor Alumnus
Deck Knight said:
Contrast this with CAP:
CAP (November): 4896
CAP (May): 3092
CAP (June): 716
Naviathan Playtest (June): 1491
Deck very well might have alluded to this (or maybe not, idk) but I just want to make it crystal clear that currently the playtest system is to completely remove the CAP ladder and replace it with the New CAPmon Playtest ladder. This means that any month with a playtest attched to it is going to have wonky statistics. And maybe this is just memory failing me and me exaggerating it, but for but we didn't even get the CAP ladder back until 1 or 1.5 months after Volkraken/Plasmanta were done, despite the official playtest period being only 2 weeks. Historically, the playtests have quite literally shitted on the CAP metagame and has made many metagame players rather bitter. The simple fact is that main CAP currently makes the CAP metagame be a part time thing. This is especially true when one takes into account that many of the more experienced CAP meta battlers are also making time (sometimes at extraordinary expenses) to be able to contribute in main CAP discussions and to fill leadership positions. As someone who was only recently promoted to a full CAP moderator position (after coming from only metagame mods) I can say that for me personally it was impossible to fully lead in both areas during CAP21, and this has definitely slowed down the metagame's ability to make and QC analyses.

Because of this history of the CAP meta getting shit on (I mean, there's no point in mincing words) I am both happy that this thread seems to be taking a turn that tries to remedy past issues. However, I am also quite skeptical. It seems that everyone who's chimed in so far is just giving definitions or parameters on what they would like their ideal CAP metagame to start as. And such people so far are definitely not CAP meta players. The result is a weird juxtaposition of "we want to more closely support the CAP metagame" with "let's burn the metagame to the ground and start over with completely new banlists."

Quite frankly, if you're going to gain the support of metagame players, I just don't see how you're going to do so with making huge overwhelming decisions regarding banlists on your own and thus essentially ruining and making obsolete every single analysis written so far. To me, the much more logical conclusion would be to slowly add (or remove I guess) threats back in (according to whatever objective guideline is set in place. The keyword here is slowly. That said, I'm still having problems with the objective guidelines that are being proposed (start with VGC (which to me makes no sense since we're not a doubles meta), start with ubers, start with 600BST) because they are inherently asking for a lot of change, and slowly changing to get to these baselines and then slowly changing again seems like a colossal waste of time. I don't mind objective guidelines in theory, and I do think they are helpful, but having them be something that starts closer to the current meta just seems to be the only way to truly avoid adding another middle finger among the many middle fingers already given to the CAP metagame. Of course, I realize some of you wouldn't necessarily care, but eh.

Personally I think it would be easier/faster for us to look at all of the mons banned from OU since the start of XY and analyze which ones would be broken in the CAP metagame (hint: definitely not all of them will be) and to keep all the rest. Of course, this is definitely less objective than the guidelines proposed so far. But it avoids having to do an excessively long series of suspects just to get a working meta. I mean, we need common sense. It's common sense that Kyu-B has over 600 BST but isn't broken. It's common sense that Primal Groudon would fuck the meta. It's probably even common sense that Mega Blaziken or Mega Kangaskan would too powerful. I don't mind breaking away from the banlist heavy nature of smogon, but at the end of the day some of the choices made were fairly common sense to anyone who even tried to play a singles-orientated metagame. Other choices do seem much more subjective, and I wouldn't mind unbanning some of those mons in order to start the metagame anew, however.

I'll probably have more thoughts on this later...
 

DougJustDoug

Knows the great enthusiasms
is a Site Content Manageris a Top Artistis a Programmeris a Forum Moderatoris a Top CAP Contributoris a Battle Simulator Admin Alumnusis a Smogon Discord Contributor Alumnusis a Top Tiering Contributor Alumnusis an Administrator Alumnus
Moderator
I put the stats together back when this thread first opened in July, and I'm not sure what my reasoning was for including randbats in the stats. But the number of randbats are so large, that I seriously doubt I included them by accident. Randbats are the single largest battling format, even bigger than OU. But I don't recall my exact reasoning.

Perhaps I included them because randbats are a ladder and have many serious players that play that ladder -- not the least of which, arguably the best randbattler in all of Smogon, is Chaos. So, it can be argued that randbats are definitely a battle format with an active playerbase.

But, after the question came up, I looked at the numbers and realized that I always excluded randbats from my ShoddyBattle stats back in DP, so I cannot easily find out how many randbats were played back then. And even though randbatting in DP was not the same as it is today -- to exclude randbats from the DP stats and include them in the XY stats, is not a proper statistical comparison. And since we aren't talking about a trivial number of battles in either generation, I agree all randbats should be excluded to see proper trends.

So, here's the graph with all randbats removed. And, since a lot of time has passed since I collected the stats, I added November 2015 stats as well.



And yes, the numbers for OU look much better as of June 2015 -- although the drop in OU was still pronounced, and alternative battles still rose dramatically to outnumber OU. The trend directions I noted were still evident, and since we have even more recent data -- you can see they have continued to move down for OU and up for alternative formats.

So, on the one hand, removing randbats make things look better for OU. BUT on the other hand, time has passed, and time is not working in OU's favor -- which was kinda my whole point all along.

I hope this thread does not get too deep into a pedantic statistical analysis, because stats can be interpreted many different ways by different people. I pulled together some stats that I think supported my pre-existing suspicions about battling trends and the rise of alternative formats. But I said it before, and I'll say it again -- I don't think the stats really PROVE anything.

One final note that Stratos mentioned, and I agree with, even though I didn't mention it in my original post -- the alternative formats stats are presented as a single number, but they are the sum total of many different formats. So when comparing alternative formats altogether against OU, it might give the appearance that there is a new most popular metagame that has surpassed OU, and that's not true. OU is still #1 by far.
 

Deck Knight

Blast Off At The Speed Of Light! That's Right!
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Top CAP Contributor Alumnusis a Top Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus
HeaLnDeaL Actually, I'm glad you brought that up. The reason I pointed those out is precisely because, *in theory*, playing with the CAP would make the Playtest comparably popular even with the disruption of the ladder, but it doesn't.

Also I didn't mean to wax too philosophically about the baseline. I support the current full CAP metagame participants making any of those determinations above anyone else because of their investment in the tier. Building off from there with additions (either of new CAPs or bringing OU banned mons/clauses down from Ubers) seems like the best way to achieve what we want. Mechanically we'll still have to reset the ladder with each addition, but this will be far, far less disruptive than removing all the CAPs to just do "3 Months Ago OU + 1" metagame.

One philosophical point I will make though: ANY ruleset we make is inherently subjective. OU's ruleset is subjective. The only tier this doesn't apply to is Anything Goes because it's a non-ruleset aligned solely with in-game mechanics and legalities (so 510 maximum EVs, etc). So the question becomes the manner we determine that ruleset, and I'll back HeaL that the CAP metagame players should have the most influence over these decisions. This effectively turns CAP into a "competitive metagame change by addition" project that is organized by its own ruleset and timing instead of OU's suspect testing ruleset and timing.
 

Bughouse

Like ships in the night, you're passing me by
is a Site Content Manageris a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a CAP Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnus
Well, damn I thought removing randbats would make a much bigger knock and OU would maybe even surge to first. Even a jump from 25% to 39% (in June 2015, the latest date I could do a direct visual compare), while large, isn't that meaningful. It's pretty clear OU isn't the sole king anymore in terms of what "people" in general play. A majority of games are played in other formats. And OU is trending downward. This will change I'm sure when Gen 7 comes out and OU will bounce back up, but the general trend is down through all of DPP, BW2, and ORAS.

So, while it's still not my preference to leave OU behind (and it never will be, no matter how many walls of text I read about it), I think you've got a decent case for doing so, as long as it gets the crowd of people you want involved. I would at least understand the decision.
 

jas61292

used substitute
is a Community Contributoris a Top CAP Contributoris a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
Ok, I have started writing this post more times than I can count, and deleted it all just as many times. Doug has talked about so many different things here, and its hard for me to take it all in without wanting to comment on all of it, but I realized more and more each time I restarted this post that much of anything I would be saying would be on analysis of things that are not ultimately important to the core issues this thread is trying to solve. So, while I will say that there are some things in Doug's analysis that I don't necessarily agree with 100%, I do think that for the most part everything he is saying about what has gone on in CAP over the years is true, and I would like to focus far more on where to go from here than on the analysis of the past.

What is obviously the most important issue being discussed here is whether or not sticking with OU is still a good thing. When this thread started I was all for splitting with OU and becoming our own thing, but over time I started worrying about it. If you asked me a few days ago what my position was, I might very well have said it was completely the opposite of my posts earlier in this thread. But, I think Doug had made one thing plainly clear to me: the driving factor behind my changing opinion, that bigger is better, is simply untrue. All those other metagames out there that are not just surviving, but thriving, despite being a fraction of the size of OU, are living proof of that. Hell, I don't think there is any metagame this generation I have heard more complaints about than OU. It is no longer some holy grail of competitiveness, despite its status as the biggest and most important metagame. And I do believe that what we most need to learn from this is that worrying about being as big as we can and staying with OU simply due to its size is a mistake.

Other people have already gone into why lacking control of our own metagame is detrimental to the project, and so, at this current juncture, I would like to reaffirm that I believe we should be looking to take control of our own metagame. Again, the benefits of this have been stated already, so I am not going to waste time reiterating. What I would instead like to talk about is what I personally believe is the best way to go about this, as others have been doing.

One way that I might disagree with Doug was in his analysis of the problems with Smogon's suspecting and banning system. Now, don't get me wrong, I totally believe that it has "jumped the shark." However, I believe the reason for that is not anything to do with the system itself, but rather the expectations that have become ingrained into, which are consistent with old generation balance, and not at all consistent with what Game Freak has presented to us in the past few years. The process itself of testing, discussing and voting as a community are something I have always, and will always be a big fan of. That said, the more I think about it the more I do believe that we would be best served by doing away with all that for our own metagame, at least to start things off. Ultimately, I think trying to create a metagame both by addition and subtraction will just be too much to deal with. Ubers and AG have shown that we don't need to ban "broken" things to have a metagame people enjoy, and so ignoring "balance" and keeping the focus on the creation of new Pokemon to effect the tier rather than on any sort of testing and removal would be ideal to me.

Of course, that leaves us at one core issue people have already been talking about: what would the rules be? How do we make something that can be fairly objective and that can stand the test of time, without being frustrating to play? I mean, lets be completely clear here, there is not currently going to be any way to objectively have a banlist without including some things people find ridiculous. BUT, we're CAP, dammit, and we have better ways of doing things than simply conforming to an arbitrary Base Stat Limit. We had an awesome mathematician create a statistical rating for us explicitly so we would not have to use the flawed BST as a measure of power. So, if we are going to start anywhere with an arbitrary cutoff for an "objective" banlist, I think we should be looking at BSR. Not only is this more in line with CAP and its competitive origins, but it also would give as an actual competitive limit for what we are allowed to do with our own creations. Specifically, I would propose that we use a BSR cutoff of 400 (aka Fantastic). Obviously, this might not come even close to directly matching up with what people might think of as a "ideal" metagame, what with Pokemon like Mega Gengar, Mega Kangaskhan, Blaziken and Sky Forme Shaymin being allowed, while Pokemon like Black Kyurem, Regigigas, Mega Diancie and Mega Garchomp would be banned. But, we are not going to be OU, so I almost feel like a starting point that blatantly shows that and gets people out of that mindset would be ideal.

Now, the final issue I want to address is how this will effect the existing CAP metagame community. I have always been a huge supporter of the community, and do not want to see it uprooted. With that said, I don't think we can refuse to change the metagame, or even only change it a little bit just to avoid any friction here. And besides, its not like the changes to the meta have ever been in their control anyways. Each and every ban OU has made has an effect on the CAP meta, for better or worse, and its not like McMeghan or PDC or whoever else is in on those decisions knows a lick about the CAP metagame. Yes, this might have a bigger effect on the metagame than anything before. And would there be a lot of work involved? Hell yeah. But these people are dedicated, and if you doubt their commitment to playing and discussing and helping people out with a metagame involving CAP pokemon, I think you will be surprised. I truely believe that the CAP meta community would take on the challenge of a change, and come out fine, if not even stronger, knowing that they can now build for a metagame that is completely their own.
 
Last edited:

HeaLnDeaL

Let's Keep Fighting
is an Artistis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a CAP Contributor Alumnus
While BSR is certainly better than BST in terms of determining the actual power level of a Pokemon, it is still highly flawed. Just the example that jas provided gives me all the reason not to support using BSR to determine our banlist; common sense tells us that Kyurem-B (and lewl Regigigas) are not ban worthy. Subscribing to a system that bans them is pretty darn ridiculous.

I don't disagree with jas's closing sentiment, but his actual proposal is almost as disastrous as the ones already put forward.

Now, the final issue I want to address is how this will effect the existing CAP metagame community. I have always been a huge supporter of the community, and do not want to see it uprooted. With that said, I don't think we can refuse to change the metagame, or even only change it a little bit just to avoid any friction here. And besides, its not like the changes to the meta have ever been in their control anyways. Each and every ban OU has made has an effect on the CAP meta, for better or worse, and its not like McMeghan or PDC or whoever else is in on those decisions knows a lick about the CAP metagame.
I think jas is going into this with somewhat of a defeatist attitude. He is saying the meta players never had control of their own metagame, so why bother giving them control when starting anew? I find this to be highly flawed. Starting out by giving them control, or at least some level of control, would be ideal.

Honestly, I think the best way to move forward would be to set up a voting panel of accomplished and involved metagame players AND active and skilled players from other tiers. The people who have played with the CAPmons through and through know a lot about the current metagame, and seeing their voices ignored simply because they've never had control before is not something I can get behind. That said, we are a small community right now, and if we want to grow then taking in opinions from more established communities would be ideal. Ideally I'd like this voting panel to be made up of roughly half CAP meta players and half from various well established metagames (probably an emphasis on singles and OU simply because it is the most similar). Essentially, the panel would then vote on all of the banned mons from OU since the start of XY and determine if they'd be broken in the CAP metagame. How to choose people for the panel would be up to debate, but maintaining a ratio in which CAP metagame voices are still heard and valued is something I think is important. In the end, this form of voting might not create a perfectly balanced and well-maintained starting point from the get go, but I'd like to believe as a competitive Pokemon site that we have enough judgment to create a much much better starting point than a system that bans Regigigas from the get go.

But come on--the "objective" systems of starting anew all have such serious flaws and ignore relevant competitive aspects of Pokemon to the point where they are worse than a subjective system that is at least based on common sense and competitive knowledge.
 

Deck Knight

Blast Off At The Speed Of Light! That's Right!
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Top CAP Contributor Alumnusis a Top Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus
jas61292 the best thing about BSR is that we can actually do things like an "adjusted BSR" to account for the fact that Mega Kang doesn't really have 125 Base Atk, It has 212. Just looking over the list the only things that break 400 we might conceivably keep are Slaking, Kyurem, and Kyurem-B. We can make a similar bar for "Adjusted Mega-Pokemon" since so many of them have abilities that are straight power-boosts to all their common attacks.

As far as CAP metagame battles, OU suspect tests and bans do effect them but not nearly as much as CAP's own playtest system, which literally annihilates the tier for not less than 2 weeks. In theory we could stop that by asking the CAP Ladder and the Playtest Ladder to be separate things (which is something we haven't asked before because its's theoretically baked into our philosophical cake). My recommendation is that since we're coming up on Crucibelle's playtest is to actually keep CAP open, but to request a Playtest Ladder of OU (pre-or post Shadow Tag ban) + Crucibelle to be a concurrent Ladder with the existing CAP Metagame.

Therefore, to turn this thread into a series of actual proposals (working off of Birkal's originals) to discuss:

1. Request OU + Crucibelle be made its own ladder for the playtest without removing the whole of the CAP Ladder.

2. With the aid and direction of CAP Metagame battlers, determine an initial banlist separate from OU's and an implementation timeline.

3. All future CAPs will be made for this new metagame, and will be implemented within it upon completion. The Playtest Tournament will still be held two weeks after implementation and we will still crown a playtest champion for the first two weeks of play as an incentive.

I'll pause here to note that none of this actually requires us to update our Mission Statement, which is as follows:
"The Create-A-Pokémon project is a community dedicated to exploring and understanding the competitive Pokémon metagame by designing, creating, and playtesting new Pokémon concepts."

Whether we want to update the mission statement to reflect that CAP is its own separate metagame I'll leave to a little more discussion, but I do think it is important not to forget who we are and why we're here.
 

jas61292

used substitute
is a Community Contributoris a Top CAP Contributoris a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
HeaLnDeaL - While I get what you are saying, your entire point seems to be using the current standard as justification, which for the most part we seem to want to get away from. You say common sense tells us that certain things are not ban worthy, but what is common sense? You are going off of the current standard of banning for balance, which, to be completely honest, OU has shown does not work, and Ubers and others have shown do not make a more fun metagame. Does lacking Kyu-B make the meta worse? I have no idea. Does it make it better? I don't know. But would using BSR as a standard and thus banning it it be objective? Absolutely.

And as for what I was saying about meta players not having control, I think you got the general gist, but completely are misrepresenting the attitude. I am not defeatist about this at all. Rather, I am very optimistic about it. My point is that because meta players have never had control, they are adaptable and capable of dealing with change, and so going from a subjective standard to an objective one won't be overly disruptive. In fact, the overall stability it will provide would in the long term be helpful, as with a BSR based system, you can only ever get changes to the allowed Pokemon when new Pokemon are added (since BSR is in part a comparative analysis, its possible a borderline Pokemon could move up or down thanks to the addition of other Pokemon, but no Pokemon are very borderline at the moment), which would only ever be when a new game is released.

Your overall point is that "common sense" says that objective is bad, but my point is that "common sense" AND having been around the competitive community for over 5 years has taught me that subjective systems do not actually work, that "balance" is overrated, and that any other measure of a metagame is really nothing more than personal opinion.


Deck Knight - Yeah, I meant to actually mention that BSR, being a formula we created, could likely be adjusted to account for things like abilities that significantly alter stats. I'm not that kinda math person, but if someone was able to do that, well, great. I'm not sure how simple it would be, since counting Huge Power as just a higher attack stat ignores the fact that it is accounting for both stats and abilities, where other Pokemon only count stats, and still have an ability significantly affecting their power level. But, if someone can do it and it works, fine by me.



EDIT: The BSR calc I am using, from BMB's thread, does not currently include Hoopa or Hoopa-U. Because of the aformentioned fact that BSR is in part a comparative analysis, the lacking of an existing Pokemon will through off the ratings. I don't personally know how to adjust the rating formulas (I know they involve some averages or something like that, but nothing beyond that), and as far as I know the only people to have officially adjusted them are x-act, Rising Dusk and bugmaniacbob, none of whom are still around. If someone else knows how to do this and would be willing to update the calc, that would be highly appreciated. If not... well, I guess we have problems, both for my proposal and just the usage of BSR in the CAP project in general.
 
Last edited:

HeaLnDeaL

Let's Keep Fighting
is an Artistis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a CAP Contributor Alumnus
BSR, in it's current state, ignores abilities and ignores movepools. Saying that BSR is a completely objective and realistic tool for measurement is flawed, as it does not take into account many competitive aspects of the game.

While I get what you are saying, your entire point seems to be using the current standard as justification, which for the most part we seem to want to get away from. You say common sense tells us that certain things are not ban worthy, but what is common sense? You are going off of the current standard of banning for balance, which, to be completely honest, OU has shown does not work, and Ubers and others have shown do not make a more fun metagame.
I think voting to reverse past OU bans within the CAP metagame is a clear case of changing the current standard, not abiding by it. Finally giving the meta a voice of its own is reversing the standard, not abiding by it. On the contrary saying that the meta must play by weird, untested, highly flawed BSR limits is painting us into a corner even more disastrous than the one we are currently in. Demanding us to play by rules that define only half a Pokemon and ignore the other competitive elements is an extremely limiting factor, way more so than having subjective bans.

The idea is that we should have a safe starting point. BSR limits have not proven themselves as being safe, and I cannot support an option that only makes us consider half of a Pokemon when deciding a banlist. AFTER having our starting point, then we essentially go passed the "ban for balance" route of OU and go with the "build for balance + fun" route of adding new CAPs. But if you start with a place that is overly restrictive and competitively ignorant, then all you can do is try to add new mons to pretty up a flawed starting point.

EDIT: Just want to add that as far as Deck's bolded proposal goes, I am pretty much in full support of it.
 
Last edited:

jas61292

used substitute
is a Community Contributoris a Top CAP Contributoris a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
BSR, in it's current state, ignores abilities and ignores movepools. Saying that BSR is a completely objective and realistic tool for measurement is flawed, as it does not take into account many competitive aspects of the game.
I don't want to come off as condescending or anything, but this just makes me feel you don't understand what objective actually means. Objective is not "most balanced." Objective is not "perfect."

What objective is, is free of bias. An objective method of banlist determination is not about creating a banlist that makes the metagame most... whatever. It is about creating a banlist that is not constantly subject to opinion and change as people make decisions which history has shown us do not actually lead to any sort of better metagame. You know what metagames have an objective banlist? Battle Spot. Just because they only consider a Pokemon's real life availability and flavor status as an important legendary doesn't mean it is not objective. And you know what? They are the most popular metagames in the world. To say that it is "competitively ignorant" is to call every tier we have "competitively ignorant" since every tier is based off of OU, which started with an arbitrary banlist, void of any reasoning that comes from actual empirical competitive evidence and based completely on an assumption that ideal is "close in appearance to DP." No, competitiveness is not about how your rules are made. It is about what you do with them. Strategies and the evolution thereof within a metagame are what make it competitive. Metagame after metagame has shown this, from Battle Spot to VGC to our own forums.

Your assessment that the method is flawed is only reached because you are using as a base assumption the fact that the goals of our current method of metagame building is correct, and that is something that I reject. The idea that voting to bring us to a CAP specific banlist is changing the current standard is simply not true. It is taking control of the metagame, sure, but the standard being used is exactly the same, and exactly as flawed.
 

Deck Knight

Blast Off At The Speed Of Light! That's Right!
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Top CAP Contributor Alumnusis a Top Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus
tl;dr every system is flawed, every system is subjective. This includes BSR because even if BSR uses an objective methodology (formulas) the cutoff is subjective. More to the point the BSR thread itself says that the system can be gamed, and actual Pokemon exist that game it (Chansey/Blissey being most prominent, but of course there are others). BSR doesn't just fail to account for abilities or movepools, it fails largely to account for both Natures and EVs. It's an excellent averaging system, but for "objective" criteria it misses even parts of the Stat mechanic it measures for goodness sake.

Bottom line is, lets come to a consensus about "What" needs to be changed and then go about "How." My assumption is that based on how we're discussing "How" that "What" has been answered, but my assumption could be wrong.

That said, the fact that Almost Any Ability and STABMons are supported metagames with solid playerbases, CAP is hardly out of line. Essentially you have a "What If Abilities" metagame, a "What If Movepools" metagame, and CAP would become the "What If Pokemon" metagame. It actually fits in quite nicely with what is already going on. The way I see it, the best "How" is to take the people already playing that metagame and give them the reigns. I've always hated the royal "we," whether it's "we mods," "we PRC," or "we is actually Doug but this makes it sound more democratic." I think CAP has established a group of people who care about the metagame enough to actively contribute, and as a community I think its time to unleash the chains and get in step with what simulators have allowed Smogon's playerbase to accomplish.
 

Bughouse

Like ships in the night, you're passing me by
is a Site Content Manageris a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a CAP Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnus
Here, have a radical proposal: The metagame that CAP should build for going forward is all-CAP. And by that I mean, the only available mons are CAP mons.

I think there is no sense in severing from OU but instead following OU-lite. If the goal is to balance by addition not exclusion, why would you first start by excluding a whole bunch of possible Pokemon that OU finds tolerable based on BST, etc?

Instead, this radical proposal is quite literally the most objective tier list you could come up with. Once Crucibelle finishes, it has 21 available Pokemon all of which are at least to some degree viable. 21 sounds small compared to hundreds, but remember that most fully evolved Pokemon GameFreak has churned out are terrible, or at least terrible in the 6 on 6 singles format. Every CAP is at least somewhat viable.

Metagames with too many threats are often seen as bad because no team can cover everything, which greatly reduces the importance of in-battle skill and turns it over to teambuilding and luck in terms of matchups. And what does a metagame with too many threats look like? Well... ORAS OU... and even more so the current CAP metagame, which is OU + all those new top threats. So instead, maybe CAP should think small.

This would have been unthinkable in the early days of CAP, but now there are 21 Pokemon available, and growing. But Bughouse, you're saying, 21 Pokemon is not nearly enough. Well, I'm not so sure. RBY OU had a tierlist of mons that actually get used of only 16ish, exact number depending on who you ask. GSC OU has a tierlist in the low 20s maybe as many as 30 as well (again, depending on who you ask.) It's a doable number, and one that only continues to increase as more CAPs get made. You also should remember that there is inherently more diversity in these 21 mons than there was even in GSC's 30, due to increased type count, movepool options, and, probably most importantly, items (Choice Scarf, Life Orb, etc.).

And therein lies the balance by inclusion part. This metagame with 21 Pokemon will inevitably be imperfect. It will also be much more apparent what parts of the metagame are imperfect as there are far fewer moving parts. This will make attempts to balance the metagame by adding new future CAPs much more doable than under any other method. This metagame already has 16 of the 18 Pokemon types represented and the (important) Fairy type and Normal type I'm sure could be created in short order.

I will note that if this path were to be chosen, I would recommend something (that I can't believe I'm saying, but...): Mega Evos for past CAPs. It would make no sense to play with only one Mega Evo available, and Mega Evos of past CAPs can be advocated for in order to start to attempt to create balance in the 21 Pokemon metagame before a 22nd would be added. Perhaps movepool revisions for old CAPs as well.

The point is that CAP could control its own metagame and never feel tied to OU again in any way. I'm reminded of how Gothitelle became super popular in CAP to trap the ever-present Tomohawk, and so then Tomohawk began running Baton Pass... and then Shadow Tag just got banned and Tomohawk, an S-rank threat all of a sudden got back a free moveslot again. It's radical changes like this that shake up CAP out of its control. So why continue to stay tied to OU at all?

Pros:
  • Uniquely CAP, fitting with the perception many already have of the project
  • Self-contained and controllable
  • Goal of balance by addition, rather than subtraction, seems doable
  • Likely to create a lot of buzz within the CAP community, which has been lacking for some time
Cons:
  • May cut off what little support that is still there from "standard" players (including me haha, but I'll still propose this anyway)
  • Likely requires potentially messy revisions of past CAPs to succeed in the short run
  • (Although this is hopefully inspired by the level of control...) Requires a dedicated playerbase who understand what the meta needs
  • Is this even Pokemon anymore?
Now, everyone go crazy telling me how stupid this proposal is :]
Or maybe not, idk.
Just throwing it out there.
 

Deck Knight

Blast Off At The Speed Of Light! That's Right!
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Top CAP Contributor Alumnusis a Top Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus
Right, so we'e had two competing proposals regarding what the CAP metagame should look like, as well as my originals which include a technical request.

I still believe we ought to request the Playtest be a separate ladder from Full CAP without the reset. DougJustDoug Birkal can you comment on the feasibility of this?

That just leaves the content of proposal 2 and 3 in contention, as Bughouse seems to be operating on the same assumptions that we'll build for the meta and input from CAP Meta players is incorporated in this thread. Here are the pros and cons as I see it. For ease of comparison lets call them Proposal DK (PDK) and Proposal BH (PBH).

PDK:
PDK Pros:
  • Constructed similarly to existing Gen 6 metagames, which are characterized by a high number of distinct threats that cannot all be prepared for at once.
  • Similar to the existing Full-CAP Metagame, minimizing "information drain" on current analyses.
  • Has little if any need to "update" prior CAP Pokemon to equalize metagame viability.

PDK Cons:
  • Will require a significant amount of work to determine which additional OU banned Pokemon and strategies are eligible for play.
  • Existing biases regarding that eligibility will be magnified because of similarity.

PBH:
PBH Pros:
  • Smaller metagame does allow us to tailor the CAPs to metagame needs quickly. It will also reduce the number of threats to account for in every CAP discussion which will streamline forum processes.
  • The eligibility rules are explicitly clear from the get-go, as most CAPs cannot effectively employ strategies that are banned by clause.
  • No existing biases regarding play will factor because the tier is entirely different from anything in our current analyses.

PBH Cons:
  • General diversity of Only-CAPs is limited. The metagame is most similar to Generation 2 in terms of the number of threats and Generation 1 in terms that there are, for example, no Fairy- or Normal-typed Pokemon represented at all.
  • Several earlier generation CAPs will need "updates" to bring them to parity, and possibly Mega Evolutions so that Crucibelle is not the only CAP in the tier with one.

If there's been any misrepresentation let me know, but these are the objective qualities of the proposals, good and bad, as far as I can see them. We should still be making an active effort to discuss them here, on #cap and in the CAP Showdown! chatroom.
 

HeaLnDeaL

Let's Keep Fighting
is an Artistis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a CAP Contributor Alumnus
bughouse said:
Cons:
  • May cut off what little support that is still there from "standard" players (including me haha, but I'll still propose this anyway)
I think this highlights the biggest flaw with bughouses's proposal. He is suggesting a metagame that he does not want to play. As far as I know, no one wants to play the meta he is suggesting. After many many talks with the current players of the CAP metagame, I don't think I've found one person who legitimately wants to play this meta.
 
I agree with HeaL. Personally, I haven't talked with anyone that's expressed any enthusiasm about essentially obliterating the current CAP metagame in favor of the metagame described in Bughouse's proposal.

There's a significant chunk of CAP participants that also happen to be CAP metagame players. It only seems logical to me to focus on a CAP metagame that's identical or similar to the one we already have; we have quite a few resources, players, and a good deal of metagame knowledge to support our future endeavors. Let's embrace this! Shifting towards a metagame that we already have participants playing in, discussing on the forums, and contributing analyses among other resources to can really only be seen as a positive. Deck Knight's proposal definitely needs to be hashed out further in terms of how the banlist should be determined, but even so, it's the only proposal I'd seriously consider between the two.

As far as the playtest ladder goes, I'm also in favor of keeping the main CAP ladder (all CAP + OU) active in addition to the playtest ladder (Crucibelle + OU), especially if we are contemplating this shift towards the CAP metagame. If this is at all feasible, it should be strongly considered.
 
Bughouse's proposal is completely unplayable. I've tried playing all CAPmons vs all CAPmons before, and it's the absolute worst. I've seen more diversity out of Gen 1 OU. Unless Crucibelle is going to beat the Tomohawk+Colossoil+Kitsunoh+Krillowat core that beats everything in the tier (spoilers: it loses to all 4), we're going to end up with a distinctly worse format.
 

DougJustDoug

Knows the great enthusiasms
is a Site Content Manageris a Top Artistis a Programmeris a Forum Moderatoris a Top CAP Contributoris a Battle Simulator Admin Alumnusis a Smogon Discord Contributor Alumnusis a Top Tiering Contributor Alumnusis an Administrator Alumnus
Moderator
Birkal, HeaLnDeaL, and I had a long conversation (over two hours straight) on IRC about the state of this policy discussion and the CAP project as a whole. We thought it would be a good idea to post the conversation for everyone else to see as well, since we covered a lot. I edited the log, corrected a little grammar and spelling, and reordered some lines where people were talking simultaneously. So the logs below are not direct copies of the full conversation.

The first part of the convo involved Birkal and I talking about strategic direction stuff, with HealnDeal asking several pointed questions and getting a bit frustrated with what he feels were ambiguous answers and empty rhetoric from Birkal and me.

I think that first part of the convo really sets the stage for the latter discussion, and frames the way Birkal and I are thinking about this whole thing. But, I do agree with HealNDeal that the first part of the discussion is less direct than the later discussion, so I have separated the two logs. If you want to skip the lead-in discussion -- feel free.

By the end of the second discussion, I posted this, which says, in a nutshell, how I feel about the current state of this PR thread:

<DougJustDoug>
Right now, I feel like I'm walking into a Melting Pot restaurant and asking some of the most avid patrons, "Why do you come to The Melting Pot?" (probing for the core appeal of the business) and I keep getting answers that kinda miss the point, like "I come here to eat." or "I come here to make fondue."
And while those answers are correct and to the point -- they aren't terribly helpful.
We need to get closer to the REAL QUESTION, if that makes sense.

If you read that and go, "WTF does eating fondue at a restaurant have to do with this PR thread?!?!" -- then you are a sane person!

Read the logs below (the second one, at least) to see how business, fondue, and CAP were all part of an interwoven discussion between the three of us. It's a long conversation, but hopefully it will help you understand how we are trying to move forward with this thread.

[02:43.42] <~Birkal> I am glad that the CAP metagame community is growing
[02:44.02] <~Birkal> but on the other hand, I don't want the bias of current players to change what is best for the CAP project as a whole
[02:45.20] <~Birkal> Doug made some poignant reasons for why CAP (and Smogon as a whole) is struggling
[02:45.33] <~Birkal> largely based on its drifting from actual "pokemon"
[02:46.16] <~Birkal> pushing my original proposal just because there is already a community could bring us to the same problems we're currently facing without really addressing the issue at its core

[02:47.40] <~Birkal> my concern is self-importance of the CAP metagame as a whole
[02:47.52] <~Birkal> I can't stress enough that I think its growing community is great
[02:48.19] <~Birkal> but its community shouldn't decide the fate of CAP as a whole
[02:48.28] <~Birkal> which has been its own independent project for several years

[02:50.54] <DougJustDoug> I agree with Birkal about how we focus on the CAP metagame.
[02:51.16] <DougJustDoug> OTOH, we really do want to leverage the fact that there is a base of players and interest there
[02:51.37] <DougJustDoug> But the PR thread is about the future of the CAP PROJECT, not the CAP metagame
[02:51.55] <DougJustDoug> The CAP meta, particularly the existing CAP meta is a minor part of that

[02:52.47] <DougJustDoug> The only reason I am hesitant to massively disrupt the CAP meta is because I don't want to disenfranchise the small, but active, community there
[02:53.31] <DougJustDoug> But if disruption with the existing CAP meta puts us on the best long-term path -- then I'd do it without hesistation

[02:53.38] <&HeaLnDeaL> clearly you guys have a different picture of what you want out of the PRC thread
[02:54.09] <&HeaLnDeaL> so rather than just hiding behind a veil and asking for us to discuss it, and then not liking what ideas we support while discussing it, it would be helpful for you to just say what you want

[02:54.04] <~Birkal> in CAP history, often the best path has been a third alternative that wasn't immediately viewable. that's the purpose of dialogue and the PRC entirely -- we're here to discuss all possible venues and come forward with the best product

[02:55.05] <&HeaLnDeaL> I mean, we have 3 venues right now. and only one of them has support from multiple people at this time.

[02:55.53] <DougJustDoug> I don't actually want anything specific. I never have for CAP. I want CAP to be a project that exhibits certain properties. And we're not exemplifying that right now
[02:56.13] <DougJustDoug> And I'm not sure doubling down on the existing CAP meta will get us there either
[02:56.29] <&HeaLnDeaL> which properties do you want to exemplify, and what ideas do you have to exemplify them
[02:56.36] <DougJustDoug> So, I'm trying to see what other ways we might move in that direction
[02:56.45] <DougJustDoug> Emphasis on the "we"
[02:57.13] <&HeaLnDeaL> so far, only one of the proposals even has a "we" -.-
[02:58.09] <DougJustDoug> And I don't think I need to defend my track record of giving a voice to perceived minorities of players who enjoy alternative metagames

[02:58.50] <~Birkal> not all CAP PR threads necessarily end with proposals and written-in-stone laws
[02:58.54] <~Birkal> although some certainly do
[02:59.16] <~Birkal> I think Doug gave us a lot to chew on, and the rest of the conversation would be more accessible if it was viewed through that lens, in my opinion
[02:59.38] <~Birkal> it sort of seemed like Doug made a post, and people chimed in with their ideas and wants, rather than continuing the conversation

[02:58.52] <&HeaLnDeaL> okay, is it even true that you still want to build mons for our own metagame (not even saying this metagame has to be the current cap metagame)?
[02:59.28] <&HeaLnDeaL> I mean, it's terribly terribly hard to even figure out what you guys wants anymore

[02:59.54] <DougJustDoug> I want to build mons that make other smart, talented people want to build mons with us.
[02:59.57] <~Birkal> even similar to the CAP project, our policy is about the journey, not necessarily the end product

[03:00.20] <DougJustDoug> Part of that is having an active base pf players that use those mons in REAL BATTLES.
[03:00.38] <DougJustDoug> Capital letters was a joke ref on my past front page announcements
[03:00.41] <DougJustDoug> Not shouting ;-)
[03:00.45] <&HeaLnDeaL> define what an active base is? is there a quantity?
[03:01.32] <&HeaLnDeaL> are you saying the current cap meta does not meet your requirements for active?
[03:02.43] <DougJustDoug> The current meta is active and growing, so that's good. Unfortunately, the forum project that serves up those mons is in a destructive spiral.
[03:03.16] <DougJustDoug> So I'm trying to find a way to completely reshape the forum project, but not obliterate the current meta
[03:03.29] <DougJustDoug> And people making this a binary decision are not helping
[03:03.48] <DougJustDoug> Hard decisions are usually best served by giving third options

[03:04.38] <&HeaLnDeaL> in what ways would you like to reshape the forum process? it seems like you want to build mons for the cap meta? is this still a correct assumption? do you wish to change the process itself beyond just which meta we build for?
[03:05.57] <&HeaLnDeaL> and I think it's within anyone's right to say they don't like a third option that's been proposed.

[03:05.35] <DougJustDoug> I want to stop building mons for the OU meta.
[03:06.04] <DougJustDoug> And I want to end up with a meta which showcases all CAP pokemon.
[03:06.23] <DougJustDoug> The in between of those two statements is where the hard decisions come

[03:08.04] <&HeaLnDeaL> I'm just trying to figure out what you guys want

[03:08.24] <~Birkal> I can't speak for Doug, but I want what's best for CAP
[03:08.33] <~Birkal> and it's not some lockbox that can be picked
[03:08.52] <~Birkal> it's a multi-faceted issue that has spanned years and should take into consideration many viewpoints
[03:09.11] <~Birkal> I don't personally want something that I'm "hiding" from you
[03:09.18] <~Birkal> I simply don't know what's best yet, so I'm considering all options

[03:09.21] <&HeaLnDeaL> I'm not saying it shouldnt consider many viewpoints...

[03:09.50] <~Birkal> there isn't clear black and white here
[03:10.00] <~Birkal> and there rarely is in CAP policy, unfortunately
[03:10.40] <~Birkal> I don't know what I want yet, but I'm starting to prepare those thoughts for a post
[03:10.53] <~Birkal> Doug's post was a lot to chew

[03:27.01] <~Birkal> Doug, I want to go back to your point about when you used to want to submit Pokemon to GameFreak
[03:27.15] <~Birkal> what was that thought process like? would you actually go through with it?
[03:27.16] <DougJustDoug> Ok
[03:27.42] <DougJustDoug> Well, that wasn't my idea. That was Cooper's idea.
[03:27.53] <DougJustDoug> It was his whole purpose for starting CAP
[03:28.32] <DougJustDoug> He legit thought when we showed GF all the work we did, that they would go "This is amazing. We'll put it in the next game!"
[03:28.50] <DougJustDoug> Which I thought was laughably silly and naive
[03:29.06] <DougJustDoug> But Cooper was like 16 or something, so not exactly mature
[03:29.09] <~Birkal> but in your post, you went on to say how that sort of attention to quality was for the betterment of the project
[03:30.02] <DougJustDoug> But yeah -- the fact that we all assumed we would send this stuff to GF -- we imagined it would be evaluated by the actual game designers.
[03:30.45] <DougJustDoug> So leaving out shit like Substitute from the movepool or w/e -- was unthinkable. It would just demonstrate that we had no clue about what a "real pokemon" looks like.
[03:31.12] <DougJustDoug> So the first priority was to make something that GF would actually consider.
[03:31.48] <DougJustDoug> And in between the lines, we would kinda "sneak in" a pokemon that a bunch of Smogon battle nerds would actually like to use in battle.
[03:32.01] <DougJustDoug> And possibly fuck up Garchomp, in the process.
[03:32.03] <DougJustDoug> ;-)
[03:32.38] <DougJustDoug> So there was a feeling of real importance to what we were doing.

[03:32.45] <~Birkal> I've been thinking about that mindset

[03:32.59] <DougJustDoug> We never considered it to be some fanboy circle jerk
[03:33.13] <DougJustDoug> We had a "professional" mindset from Day 1

[03:33.13] <~Birkal> if we're going to create Pokemon for a metagame, we're sort of expanding our lens as game makers
[03:33.33] <~Birkal> and now we're not just making a /part/ of a game, but really something that could be considered a /game/ itself

[03:33.58] <DougJustDoug> That "professional" mindset later was "shifted" to a "serious, competitive" mindset.
[03:34.13] <DougJustDoug> And the translation was long thought to be nearly 100%
[03:34.20] <DougJustDoug> Now, I'm not so sure.
[03:34.52] <DougJustDoug> I think we have gotten so focused on the supposedly competitive stuff -- that we've become "unprofessional" in many ways.
[03:34.55] <DougJustDoug> if that makes sense

[03:35.22] <~Birkal> in terms of the substitute / protect / etc thing, yes
[03:35.42] <DougJustDoug> Well, I'm not just talking about the flavor stuff
[03:36.00] <&HeaLnDeaL> I mean, even considering to leave out those moves as a competitive oversight too. not just a professional oversight...

[03:35.52] <~Birkal> but by making Pokemon for a metagame, we become game makers ourselves
[03:36.03] <~Birkal> which is fine -- it just is different from anything else CAP has done before
[03:36.10] <~Birkal> plenty of sites / places make games
[03:36.24] <~Birkal> I think we would just begin to acknowledge that we are making a game

[03:37.08] <&HeaLnDeaL> doug and I talked about fakemon games earlier... doug's language at the time is surprisingly similar to birkal's now.
[03:37.43] <~Birkal> what do you think of it, heal?

[03:38.04] <DougJustDoug> I want to try and reconnect with the original reason people gravitated to CAP in the beginning. Because it definitely wasn't just the flavor fanboy stuff. But now after years of hyperfocus on OU -- I don't think it was because of the "Smogon competitive" focus either.

[03:38.58] <&HeaLnDeaL> well, I pretty much tried to propose making a fakemon game to go alongside with our meta. near the end of fuji's life, this was an idea thrown around as well. not sure if this is more extreme that what you're thinking though, birkal
[03:40.35] <&HeaLnDeaL> of course as soon as I brought the idea up, doug said we already had a fakemon game with our meta itself...
[03:40.46] <~Birkal> no, I think that certainly would be interesting
[03:41.07] <~Birkal> but yes, creating our own metagame in itself is its own game
[03:41.23] <~Birkal> because creating a Pokemon isn't something you can "play"
[03:41.29] <~Birkal> its when you fight them that there is actual play
[03:41.56] <~Birkal> so if we decide to make for a metagame, our viewpoint changes from what qualifies a good Pokemon to what qualifies a good game, no?
[03:42.04] <~Birkal> which is a tall order
[03:42.32] <DougJustDoug> Agreed
[03:42.43] <DougJustDoug> it's a tall order, that is

[03:42.47] <&HeaLnDeaL> well, OU tries to define what qualifies as a good game through its changing banlists
[03:43.17] <~Birkal> right, but they aren't adding anything more than a rule
[03:43.18] <DougJustDoug> I don't think OU is trying to create a good game. Not anymore they don't
[03:43.34] <DougJustDoug> They just remove the latest thing that is complained about.
[03:43.44] <DougJustDoug> and whatever game that yields -- they go with it
[03:44.02] <&HeaLnDeaL> I certainly think that are *hoping* to make a good game
[03:44.13] <DougJustDoug> Fair enough. True.
[03:44.44] <DougJustDoug> But that then gets to the question of "what is good?"

[03:44.56] <DougJustDoug> So let me ask some questions of the two of you.
[03:45.15] <DougJustDoug> I was trying to ask along these lines when we chatted the other day heal
[03:46.00] <DougJustDoug> I'm going to talk as if CAP is a business, even though there is no money in this. But I just can't frame my thinking any other way.
[03:46.08] <DougJustDoug> Ok?
[03:46.32] <~Birkal> got it

[03:47.20] <DougJustDoug> I see myself/ourselves (can't really speak for you two) like a restaurant owner.
[03:47.45] <DougJustDoug> I started the restaurant because I like the kind of food we make here.
[03:48.31] <&HeaLnDeaL> okay
[03:49.15] <DougJustDoug> But long ago, I got my fill of the food -- so nowadays I don't eat at the restaurant very often. Just occasionally. But I definitely consider myself to be an aficionado of our food. Even though I don't eat here as often as I used to, nor as often as many of our patrons.
[03:50.36] <DougJustDoug> Nowadays, my main focus is to delight as many diners as possible
[03:51.13] <&HeaLnDeaL> okay makes sense
[03:51.17] <DougJustDoug> I won't completely change the menu or general style of restaurant -- even if competing with McDonalds is the best way to pack the house.
[03:52.26] <DougJustDoug> So, assuming we need to stick to our general format and business model -- I want to increase business, because all metrics indicate to me that our business is nowhere as good as it used to be.
[03:53.57] <DougJustDoug> As ANY half-decent businessman knows, the first two questions you must answer when trying to "fix" your business is "Who are our customers?" and "Who do we want to be our customers?"
[03:54.26] <DougJustDoug> If your business is not working as well as you want -- those are almost always two different answers.
[03:55.22] <DougJustDoug> "Let's do more of what we have been doing, and we'll get more of our existing customers." -- Is the classic indication of clueless business leaders.
[03:56.14] <DougJustDoug> You gotta know who you are getting right now -- Then identify who you want to get -- Then figure out how to transition from current to future.
[03:56.32] <DougJustDoug> That's what CAP needs to do

[03:57.13] <&HeaLnDeaL> so who do you/we want to get?
[03:57.14] <DougJustDoug> Who are we getting in CAP right now? Who do we want to get? (caveat: Who do we want to get that we think we realitically CAN GET?)

[03:57.40] <DougJustDoug> That's why I was asking questions of you the other day, Heal
[03:57.54] <DougJustDoug> "Why do players play CAP?"
[03:58.12] <DougJustDoug> "Why did people get interested in <X>?"
[03:58.20] <DougJustDoug> When you were talking about your fakemon game
[03:58.24] <&HeaLnDeaL> do you mean the CAP meta or the cap playtest?
[03:58.42] <DougJustDoug> I was probing to identify the reasons people get into this kind of thing.
[03:59.22] <&HeaLnDeaL> honestly... this probably won't be a complete answer but...
[04:00.21] <&HeaLnDeaL> I play Pokemon because it is one of the cheapest games to play for the corresponding number of hours of play you get out of it. And CAP is kind of a way to expand upon the hours of play.
[04:01.11] <&HeaLnDeaL> for 40 bucks, I can have hundreds or hours worth of Pokemon gameplay and meta knowledge or whatever.
[04:01.32] <DougJustDoug> I'm not talking about why you play pokemon
[04:01.44] <DougJustDoug> Why do you do all this shit with Smogon and CAP?
[04:01.51] <&HeaLnDeaL> well, in order to play CAP I must play Pokemon first.
[04:01.51] <DougJustDoug> It's a lot of work
[04:02.00] <DougJustDoug> Something is motivating you
[04:02.18] <&HeaLnDeaL> both smogon and CAP are ways to extend the amount of "playtime" for that initial 40 dollar cost
[04:02.40] <DougJustDoug> Fair enough. Let's take it as a given that Pokemon is a key part of our business format.
[04:02.48] <&HeaLnDeaL> both are an extension of a game that I enjoy
[04:03.34] <&HeaLnDeaL> but yeah, that should be taken as such

[04:03.55] <DougJustDoug> My guess is that you spend way more time doing stuff on the forums and sims that are NOT battling or teambuilding, as opposed to just making teams and battling on the sim.
[04:04.16] <DougJustDoug> What's the ratio?
[04:04.25] <DougJustDoug> For me, it's like 99% not battling
[04:07.07] <&HeaLnDeaL> umm I'd guess probably around 80% not battling and 20% battling
[04:07.35] <DougJustDoug> That's what I figured
[04:08.04] <DougJustDoug> And that's probably a higher battling percentage than most CAP participants overall
[04:08.16] <DougJustDoug> Do you agree?

[04:08.40] <&HeaLnDeaL> I try not to make assumptions on people that I do not know
[04:09.41] <DougJustDoug> My comment was not that controversial -- based on your read of most posts in CAP -- do you think you battle more than most CAP posters?
[04:10.10] <&HeaLnDeaL> oh, and if you consider time spent "teambuilding" as time spent battling, then my ratio probably shifts to 70-75% not battling... but I take a super long time building teams
[04:11.30] <&HeaLnDeaL> and really, my answer to your question could only be a guess as best, and I recognize my guessing skills are not the best. I mean, for this CAP, I probably had a higher battle ratio than most. for past caps, I wouldn't say that was the case tho.
[04:11.43] <DougJustDoug> My point is that CAP doesn't get many people that are really into battling. We never have.
[04:12.07] <&HeaLnDeaL> so our customers are casual battlers
[04:12.16] <DougJustDoug> We get a lot of people that are interested in battling and they do it occasionally or a lot in the past.
[04:12.30] <DougJustDoug> But not a lot currently.
[04:12.49] <&HeaLnDeaL> seems accurate

[04:13.10] <DougJustDoug> And my contention is that despite our many many efforts to increase the number of serious battlers in CAP -- we haven't made much headway there.
[04:13.23] <DougJustDoug> Arguably we've decreased in that area.
[04:13.34] <DougJustDoug> From a business perspective -- that's a really bad thing.
[04:14.05] <DougJustDoug> To make huge investments in acquiring a certain customer base -- and actually reduce your market share of those customers....
[04:14.29] <DougJustDoug> If I were an investor, I'd fire all company leaders!
[04:14.30] <DougJustDoug> ;-)

[04:15.07] <&HeaLnDeaL> I mean, I'd argue the investments spent so far have been rather poorly executed. but I'd agree we're probably not going to attract a huge base of serious battlers.
[04:15.37] <DougJustDoug> Ok, so we need to focus on customers that are winnable.
[04:16.27] <DougJustDoug> Which means we need to know what we are really selling. Which, for most businesses -- is not as obvious at it may seem to people who aren't in the business.
[04:16.36] <DougJustDoug> For example...

[04:16.49] <DougJustDoug> Have you ever been to the restaurant "The Melting Pot"?
[04:17.32] <&HeaLnDeaL> I personally think the most easily winnable base is the group of people who want to play actual fakemon games. but it seems like others wish to target elsewhere, and that fakemon game players might not be the most competitive branch which then might defeat out purpose of not being a fanboy circlejerk.
[04:17.41] <&HeaLnDeaL> and nope, never been to the melting pot.
[04:17.50] <DougJustDoug> It's a fondue place
[04:18.24] <&HeaLnDeaL> okay
[04:18.50] <~Birkal> I have :D
[04:18.54] <~Birkal> sorry, just got back -- reading now
[04:18.57] <DougJustDoug> So people sit around a table with a bowl of hot oil in the middle, and they deep fry cheese and raw meat.
[04:19.35] <DougJustDoug> Do you think The Melting Pot owners say "We sell deep fried meat and cheese" ?
[04:20.20] * HeaLnDeaL tags birkal in
[04:20.26] <DougJustDoug> Do you think people go to The Melting Pot because they love perfectly cooked fried meat and cheese?
[04:20.42] <DougJustDoug> No, of course, to both questions.
[04:20.51] <&HeaLnDeaL> i'd imagine it would be for the experience of doing it urself
[04:21.02] <DougJustDoug> Absolutely.
[04:21.41] <DougJustDoug> And because when you are sitting around deep-frying meat and cheese with a bunch of friends, it is a lot of fun.
[04:22.11] <DougJustDoug> In fact, some of the most fun happens when someone fucks up and ruins a piece of cheese or meat -- and all are laughing about it.

[04:22.34] <DougJustDoug> The Melting Pot sells a group cooking and dining experience.
[04:22.53] <&HeaLnDeaL> so essentially it's a social experience
[04:23.17] <DougJustDoug> Yes, exactly
[04:24.02] <&HeaLnDeaL> and CAP itself is a social experience
[04:24.32] <&HeaLnDeaL> so we have to figure out ways to improve the CAP social experience

[04:23.48] <DougJustDoug> If The Melting Pot submitted any of their patrons' cooked meals to a food critic, who compares it to other gourmet meals prepared by chefs -- they would be ridiculed on food quality.
[04:24.05] <DougJustDoug> But food quality is a very small part of the equation at The Melting Pot
[04:25.09] <DougJustDoug> They can't just ignore food quality. In fact, the Melting Pot has to buy really high grade cheese and meat -- specifically BECAUSE they know their patrons are likely to fuck up the cooking to one degree or another. And in the end, the food needs to be edible.
[04:25.48] <DougJustDoug> So, on one hand, they have to focus on food quality MORE than some other restaurants -- even though "food quality" ain't their core business.
[04:26.45] <DougJustDoug> But on the other hand, if The melting Pot gets too obsessed with food quality -- they will fuck up their entire business.

[04:26.52] <&HeaLnDeaL> the cap equivalent might be a bit more hazy, but I would say the best thing we can try to *control* then is the quality of our leadership

[04:28.05] <DougJustDoug> So CAP is a lot like The Melting Pot. Yep, we make food. And the food needs to be edible. But the biggest thing in CAP is that the food is being made by a bunch of people that are not really experts at cooking, and never will be.
[04:29.24] <DougJustDoug> And our job is to make a project where everyone has a great time making the food -- albeit making the food the best they can (ie not intentionally burning and ruining everything). Because at the end of the day, the food is intended to be eaten.

[04:29.30] <&HeaLnDeaL> the differences are we have way more available ingredients, and almost all of these ingredients are fair game. whereas the melting pot tries to control the quality of their ingredients to help make sure the end product is good
[04:29.59] <DougJustDoug> I agree, we have a tough job
[04:30.12] <DougJustDoug> But the analogy of the general business model is apt
[04:30.19] <&HeaLnDeaL> yeah

[04:30.48] <&HeaLnDeaL> I mean, i guess the TLT's job is to select only good ingredients to make it to the slates
[04:32.37] <&HeaLnDeaL> ultimately, the TLT/mods have to know well enough which ingredients are good AND how to facilitate a positive social environment. and finding people able to do both is hard.

[04:30.57] <DougJustDoug> We are in the business of the "journey" (ie. the experience of making the meal), not the "destination" (ie. a high quality gourmet meal)
[04:31.53] <DougJustDoug> Unfortunately CAP has gotten sidetracked over the years by trying to attract professional chefs to come cook meals at our fondue restaurant.
[04:31.58] <DougJustDoug> and it aint gonna happen
[04:32.19] <DougJustDoug> And every time a chef does wander in -- they just gripe at all the idiots fucking up everything.
[04:32.36] <DougJustDoug> And not enjoying the experience of cooking with everyone.
[04:33.32] <DougJustDoug> And those that are trying to enjoy cooking, keep getting berated by the minority of chefs in the house telling everyone how shitty they cook and how not fun it is.
[04:34.18] <&HeaLnDeaL> yeah. but nowadays most of the people complaining about CAP do it from outside of CAP.
[04:34.34] <DougJustDoug> Agreed
[04:35.33] <DougJustDoug> It's like a bunch of people saying "Don't go eat at The Melting Pot, the meals are terrible and all the cooks have no idea what they are doing."
[04:35.58] <&HeaLnDeaL> yeah
[04:37.13] <&HeaLnDeaL> and realistically this is smogon, so getting rid of the "chefs" who say that is not really feasible. since it's a hangout of chefs (and chef wannabes)

[04:36.45] <DougJustDoug> Its as if nobody advertises the "real business model" of Melting Pot
[04:37.50] <DougJustDoug> Which the real Melting Pot advertises quite well -- they don't advertise how many stars the food critics give it. They advertise pictures of people sitting around a table and having a great time cooking and eating.
[04:38.27] <DougJustDoug> CAP has bought into the idea that we need to be a 5 star restaurant -- and we're not. We're never going to be.
[04:38.47] <DougJustDoug> But that doesn't mean we intentionally make unedible meals.
[04:38.57] <DougJustDoug> It's just not the definition of success for us.

[04:39.28] <&HeaLnDeaL> honestly... I still think making a fakemon game is a good way to change our advertising scheme...

[04:39.31] <DougJustDoug> And even if we make a meal that is ruined every once in a while -- those can sometimes be the most enjoyable!
[04:39.51] <DougJustDoug> I don't know how to change the advertising
[04:40.37] <DougJustDoug> But the first thing I want to know is what kind of people we WANT to come to CAP. Because it is NOT people that are interested mostly in battling in a balanced metagame.
[04:40.46] <DougJustDoug> That's my opinion, anyway.
[04:40.50] <DougJustDoug> Maybe I'm wrong
[04:41.17] <DougJustDoug> But I'm not certain what is the primary draw for CAP

[04:41.28] <~Birkal> I think people want to come to CAP to make a crazy cool Pokemon that they've invented in their head (or parts of it) and have it have as close to the same prestige of a "real" Pokemon as possible
[04:41.30] <DougJustDoug> It's not just the flavor stuff either
[04:41.37] <&HeaLnDeaL> we want people who are moderately competitively knowledgeable but more importantly people familiar with the game and know how to make a "realistic" pokemon. Or at least that's what I would assume we would want.
[04:41.55] <~Birkal> I think many people come to CAP and are initially frustrated that they aren't the head honcho
[04:42.05] <~Birkal> but through time, they realize it's all about the community aspect
[04:42.21] <~Birkal> and THAT is why the end result has so much prestige

[04:42.03] <DougJustDoug> Birkal -- you're getting right to where I was going with this.
[04:43.27] <DougJustDoug> I think people come to CAP to make a real competitive pokemon. And each one of those three words is massively important, and has equal share in our customer base interest.
[04:43.29] <DougJustDoug> Real.
[04:43.31] <DougJustDoug> Competitive.
[04:43.33] <DougJustDoug> Pokemon.

[04:45.17] <&HeaLnDeaL> to me, the realest of real is an actual playable game beyond just competitive aspects. competitive obviously means viable in battles between other real people. and Pokemon... is probably a lot harder to define. and to achieve.
[04:48.39] <&HeaLnDeaL> I mean, we could alternatively break it up into "real pokemon" and "competitive pokemon" and be able to define it easier, but I'm not sure if that would help or hurt the defining exercise.

[04:48.17] <DougJustDoug> Well, this is the sort of thing I have been obsessing over since the PR thread started. How to connect with the core success factors of CAP.
[04:48.36] <DougJustDoug> That doesn't mean throwing away everything we've been doing.
[04:49.33] <DougJustDoug> it's mostly about shifting our focus a little, and then figuring out what minor adjustments we need to make to get back to the essence of what made CAP catch on in the early days.
[04:49.55] <DougJustDoug> Because from a general process POV, CAP is pretty much the same as always.
[04:50.09] <DougJustDoug> And should remain pretty much the same.
[04:50.23] <DougJustDoug> It's just about reorienting our project.
[04:50.45] <DougJustDoug> "Control the narrative" to use another overused cliche

[04:51.47] <~Birkal> To reference your analogy, it feels like we are currently being asked to make four-star gourmet food
[04:52.17] <~Birkal> when really what we do is make good food that has wide appeal and is /much/ easier to make than top tier food, so to speak
[04:52.26] <~Birkal> because we cannot make that food, only gamefreak can
[04:53.16] <&HeaLnDeaL> well "much easier to make" brings our concepts to mind. and that maybe some of our concepts are overly ambitious.
[04:55.24] <&HeaLnDeaL> we need concepts that can be achieved successfully in multiple different ways by a moderate skilled participant base. if the meat is ruined every time someone tries to deep fry it, then the fun is ruined. one bad deep frying can be funny and stuff, but multiple times in a row is discouraging.


[04:58.51] <DougJustDoug> I have to go for today guys. But I want to pick up this conversation again soon.
[04:59.00] <DougJustDoug> I want to somehow start getting more helpful answers from the active community on this.
[04:59.08] <DougJustDoug> Right now, I feel like I'm walking into a Melting Pot restaurant and asking some of the most avid patrons, "Why do you come to The Melting Pot?" (probing for the core appeal of the business) and I keep getting answers that kinda miss the point, like "I come here to eat." or "I come here to make fondue."
[04:59.18] <DougJustDoug> And while those answers are correct and to the point -- they aren't terribly helpful.
[04:59.31] <DougJustDoug> We need to get closer to the REAL QUESTION, if that makes sense.

[04:59.27] <~Birkal> posting this conversation may be useful
[04:59.45] <~Birkal> it may help provide a frame of reference for what we're looking to accomplish
[05:01.12] <DougJustDoug> I'll take a crack at editing the log and I'll post it later tonight perhaps

[05:02.21] <~Birkal> I'm gonna keep thinking on this
[05:02.34] <~Birkal> now that my holiday break is over (and I actually have a computer), I'll be much more involved :>
[05:02.55] <DougJustDoug> and yeah Birkal, I plan to keep thinking on it too
[05:03.23] <DougJustDoug> That long post took a lot out of me in terms of writing posts. But I've been thinking about this stuff continuously.
[05:04.18] <~Birkal> it's not something that can be solved overnight
[05:04.35] <~Birkal> but I think we're on a good head start to have something together for CAP22
 

Quanyails

On sabbatical!
is a Top Artist Alumnusis a Community Leader Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnus
Hello, all! There was a bit of a discussion today in PS! about this topic, so I started up an Etherpad for everyone to contribute their ideas. I really find it easier to follow discussions through this tool rather than trawl through PRC lines and posts. Hence, here is what some members of PS!'s CAP room had at the end of the day. I give my thanks to Animaignis for helping cleaning up these notes!

How to make CAP more enjoyable:

Goal 1: CAP needs to be accessible to a well-rounded demographic of users.
  • Problem:
    • Competitive users disdain casual users for their lack of knowledge, leading to messy discussions.
    • Casual users get 'shut out' by competitive users, stifling new contributions.
    • Both sides (casual users and experienced users) get frustrated with each other.
    • The CAP process in general becomes frustrating for all users.
  • Suggestions:
    • Offer tournament/contribution badges to motivate good competitive discussion.
      • The CAP Contributor badge is technically active, yet CAP is still considered to be in decline.
    • Expand the different CAP metas (CAP doubles etc.)
      • What's the incentive? Attracting users that play DOU, e.g.?
        • I've had requests from double players to have a dubs cap format/tier.
    • Having a userbase that is welcoming to all players, and also having capabilities to interest and involve both new players and players with experience. (practice CAP products, etc.) via helpful/approachable leadership and a welcoming community.
      • Do we attain this userbase via moderatorship, changing individuals, or other?
        • Having a moderator team that actively engages with users in chat would be a huge plus.
      • Are we willing to teach and be taught? As most bad posts come during the process, teach new players while there are no CAPs being made?
    • If OU players are better, get more? How?
    • Alternatively: competitive discussion does not require OU players. CAP is unattractive to OU players, and do people interested in CAP can learn competitive Pokemon in a separate environment.
Goal 2: Improve the playtest.
  • Problem:
    • The playtest is obsolete because it's a 'snapshot' of the OU metagame.
    • The playtest is centralized around the new CAP, making games predictable.
    • The CAP ladder does not sponsor great OU players, so the quality of the ladder is lacking.
    • The playtest does not last for more than several weeks; the 'field test' gives little incentive to do well compared to longer-lasting metagames.
    • Overall, this makes the playtest not very fun for players.
  • Suggestions:
    • Earlier, imanalt suggested moving towards a tour-based playtest. Not an elimination of the ladder per se, but have the ladder be the practice place and have the tour be the competitive place.
      • This suggestion does not address issues 1, 2, and 4.
Why do people come to CAP? Here are some answers from some participants in this discussion. (A.k.a. 'melting pot')
  • Quanyails: I came to see my sprites on site and on the simulator. :P I then stayed to contribute to the other art parts.
  • Animaignis: I came because I was curious aboth the creation process, having seen a CAP who-knows where, probably some random one on PS!, wondered what it is, looked it up, and then lurked for an unknown amount of time until participating. I thought the creation process was complex and fascinating, so I hopped on into CAP.
  • Exclaimer: It's not boring ass OU and it's unique. cool mons are cool.
  • SamHPL: I liked how CAPs look and ended up liking how CAPs change the way battles happen, a funny yet centralized Meta.
  • Phobias: I came into the meta because I loved how nice and supporting everyone was. After being lured in I just kind of stuck with it because of my ability to be heard in the room, Also Senpai Zeonth was there.
  • cbrevan: I found the ladder when i was experimenting with metagames and found it as fun and engaging.
  • Fratty: i was attracted to cap for the doubles capabilities but stayed for how fun the meta was and the nice people
  • Khosro: I saw CAP on the OMs and went to see what it was. I didn't understand it, so I went into the chatroom, where people were talking about the ladder. I asked them why laddering mattered, and they told me so you could back up your opinions. So I decided to ladder on CAP, and I enjoyed it.
  • HeaL: This is probably a really long and complicated story for me. I started using smogon to learn RNG stuff, and on Smogon's front page there would occassionally be CAP news. Tomohawk's news in particular was something that I thought was really interesting, but whenever I wanted to participate it was always after a project was over, and I would forget about CAP for a whilebecause of the "downtime". Malaconda was the first playtest I partipicated in, prompted once again by the front page news. It was an interesting ladder, but it was short and done with, and I didn't know a true cap meta had even existed. Then one day, much much much later, I discovered the CAP metagame on the ladder, made a few teams, and had a crapton of success (my main ladders before CAP were OU, since it was standard and easy to find matches, and NU, because it seemed so far from standard). Eventually I came to the room, started talking, participating, etc, and simultaneously started partipating in Cawdet on the forums. But really, I only came to smogon and looked at the homepage (and saw CAP news) because I was looking at ways to improve my in-game cartidge experience (via RNG).
How to attract new people: Be familiar, loud, and/or unique.
(I think personally CAP needs to be familiar enought ot be easy to learn, unique enough to be different from other metas and be it's own thing, while being loud enough of an endeavor to gain support and attention. (See near bottom to locate the subparts of these attributes)

Loud:
  • Smogon's Social Media (?) spark, snobalt, and I [HeaLnDeaL] all signed up to do CAP social media stuff but none of us were ever contacted back : ( <---
    • Can we get a YouTube channel perhaps? (Dealthy Plays has a channel)(Hendrix has a channel; really good cap vids/personality, but hasn't been updated in a really long time)he just uploaded one this weekWhat if it had battles, but maybe tutor stuff? I realize the Battling 101 videos kind of flopped, but maybe we could get somewhere with it....
  • --> Report <-- large events besides the finishing of products
    • CAP analyses only a few CAPmon analyses (for the capmons themselves, not the meta as a whole) remain to be finished... vast majority are complete for the current meta at least.
      • being able to actually put them on the onsite dex would be great, because it would make them more generally accessible.
    • Articles: I've read some articles about CAP past products. Those were interesting. So maybe some that aren't just about the stratagy? there have been a few in the past, and surely more to come. Soon time ago, I am told that CAP was awash with merry events such as warstories and tours which boosted CAP's reputation and enjoyment - perhaps we need more stuff like this?
    • Pre-evos? (Along this line, maybe we should integrate flavor a little more into CAP design, not to the point of having nothing competitive or removing competitive features (wood hammer, etc.), but to the point when it seems a tad more "complete" seeming rather than patched together. Can/will pre-evos be programmed into PS? More emphasis on flavor can be added once the LCs are added for or on articles After that we could have a LC tier for CAP mons once there is a large enough CAP player base.
    • Lore: What if we gave our CAPmons some background like where they live, what they do, on their dex pages or something like that so like above, the process is a little more complete?
      • I think the above is along the idea of making a more "complete" Pokemon experience, beyond just the competitive experience... and ultimately I think the most "complete" experience we can get is via a fakemon game :P
        • True, but we are essentially completing the fakemons "dex" based around the competitive Pokemon, not a full game or a dex based off the average things.
          • yes, well, but then we have things like prevos which aren't competitive at all. And some of the previous capmons are no longer currently all too viable.
      • Same here.
  • Make CAP more 'modern': update its on-site page to be less outdated and give all CAPmons model renders. (Animaignis: I'm going to try to learn 3D model stuff, and if other people did that would be great because then hopefully more model renders can be done)
  • More consistent updates on CAP products! (See below points)
    • Quanyails: I remember when I thought CAP was dead (before I joined Smogon) because it didn't update its on-site hub for a long time.
    • I thought CAP was dead in early this summer :P when all the mods were saying their 'throwing crap at a wall" was failing, and they had no good project ideas. And then came crucibelle :)
Unique:
  • (A little audacious:) Let CAP be more of a 'fanboy project'; make a CAP based on 'Rule of Cool' like early CAPs.
    • This doesn't sound like CAP at all
      • Lets leave it, just so we have all ideas on screen.
  • Make CAPs for other metagames besides OU. (CAP Doubles and CAP LC seem to have been requested the most)
Familiar:
  • OU Format? (idk, see point below. Its up to future discussion about how similar and different we want to be from OU.)
    • We will (obviously) probably be keeping the same format of 6v6 singles that OU tends to use just for sake of consistency, or at least until there is a large enough CAP player base to add Doubles or NFE cup or something along those lines.
Other Suggestions
  • Improve our forums.
    • Maybe via having the userbase activities and frinedly mods, as said above, as well as updating the website to be cleaner and more up-to date (and modern?) idk. Facelift?
  • Improving CAP's on-site hub.
    • I think this could go a long way... cap dex is consistently behind, and it even just looks outdated, related to the above point
    • Integrate CAPmons into the on-site Pokedex. Is there any way we can get the CAPmons onto the Smogon Dex where they'd be next to the actual real mons, improving accessibility dramatically, while also giving a small reputation boost to CAP itself.
  • Can we have CAP Tutors?
  • The meta forum is stupidly difficult to access for new users. Let's make it easier. (I'm writing an Introduction to CAP Meta which outlines roles and sets off each CAP that I hope to finish soon)
    • Maybe there should be a forums room for that.

I think that the discussion got sidetracked on popularity vs. enjoyability, but the problems noted and the suggestions jotted are still worth a read.

As for my opinion: I agree with Doug's post about what CAP's direction should be. I'm personally interested in seeing CAP again be more about making cool stuff for the metagame and learn how well it works in practice. Nowadays, concepts apply a metagame to a CAP and we learn by seeing whether predictions in discussions succeed or fail. I'd like CAPs' relation to the metagame be more like Revenankh and Mollux than Volkraken. Make CAP more disconnected from OU.

I might clean up this post later. It's getting a bit late where I am, but I felt the need to get this out today.
 
Last edited:

DougJustDoug

Knows the great enthusiasms
is a Site Content Manageris a Top Artistis a Programmeris a Forum Moderatoris a Top CAP Contributoris a Battle Simulator Admin Alumnusis a Smogon Discord Contributor Alumnusis a Top Tiering Contributor Alumnusis an Administrator Alumnus
Moderator
Quany, thank you for posting that Etherpad. For those of you that haven't read it, there's a lot of great raw feedback in there. I love seeing commentary on what draws people into CAP. That Etherpad was linked from the Showdown CAP room, so the feedback was heavily influenced by people who play CAP on the sim, and connected with CAP from that angle.

On that note, since many of you probably don't know this -- starting a couple months ago, I guess, I started hanging out on Showdown a lot more regularly. IRC has been on the decline overall for a long time, and Showdown is really the go-to place for real-time chat and interaction these days. So I hang in a couple of rooms on Showdown most weekdays now, with CAP as my favorite room (the art room is pretty cool too).

Due to my deep background with sim leadership and the fact that I'm a Smogon admin, I have staff auth on PS and with my role as CAP leader, I have RO for the CAP room now. The room auths do a great job there, so I'm not looking to "take control" of the room or anything like that. I just wanted to get in tune with that side of our CAP community -- and I'm glad I did it.

It's been a long time since I shut down my original CAP server, and I forgot how much I enjoy chatting with people that experience CAP through the lens of playing with our mons. The CAP meta people seem to enjoy hearing more about the project, leadership, and history from me, too. That's what they tell me, anyway... maybe they're just being polite, I dunno.

Anyway, I really enjoy the CAP room these days, if anything just to chat about... whatever. And we've got a great group of people there. More of you should stop by, if you're into real-time interaction on CAP stuff.


I think the forum crowd probably has some great feedback too. But rather than have all that feedback posted here, I am in the process of making an online survey that I will link here for anyone to fill in. The questions will be geared to find out the positives that brought people to CAP and made them participate actively, as well as probe for the biggest negatives that discourage participation. The survey will be open to anyone, whether they are on the PRC or not.

Many of you probably don't realize how many lurkers there are that are interested in CAP, that rarely, if ever, post or vote in CAP threads. Many of them are following this thread with great interest. I have received all sorts of PMs and Showdown messages from people commenting to me about this thread. Most of them thank us for bringing up this topic and trying to address it. The "greater urban area" of the CAP project is MUCH bigger than many of you probably realize, and almost everyone wants to see us succeed.

Here is one example of what I am talking about, this was randomly posted on IRC the other day when I wasn't on, but I noticed it when looking for something else in an IRC log:

sazel joined #cap.
[04:36] <sazel> Hey CaP! I'm a long time lurker, and after seeing all the discussion on the Adjustment in Direction PRC thread, I'd like to comment on the questions asked by Doug on the thread
[04:37] <sazel> I think the most obvious answer to why people come to CaP is to have fun. In my case, I first started lurking smogon because, blunt and simple, I liked pokemon and wanted to get better at it
[04:38] <sazel> I've never been that interested in fakemon before visiting cap, but all the discussion involved made it feel like a lot of thought was put on making these mons, and that's what made it fun for me
[04:39] <sazel> I've never actually participated, but to me watching the discussion unfold has always been my favorite part. The first cap I followed closely was Necturna
[04:40] <&@jas61292> This kinda stuff it good to know. Ultimately, the kinds of things that motivate people are the kind of things we should be aiming for.
[04:40] <sazel> I think what I'm trying to say has already been summarized by doug on the cap leadership compendium thread: This is a "serious" project, which is what makes it "fun".
[04:42] <&@jas61292> I agree with that
[04:43] <sazel> thanks jas. that's why i think that changing the focus from OU and making a metagame with all previous caps in it to be a good idea. as birkal, doug and others have already acknowledged by now, being interested in cap has little in common to being interested in ou
[04:47] <sazel> since people seem to want that, but everyone is unsure on how that should be done, what if we go and try to make the next cap for the cap meta we have now, just as an experiment? i remember when the TLT current structure was proposed, the idea was to try it for 1 cap and seeing if it would work
[04:48] <sazel> if my memory doesn't fails me
[04:48] <&@jas61292> Basically
[04:50] <sazel> anyways, that's my 2 cents on this. i'm really looking forward to the future of this project, like i know you all do


Think about what that log means -- There is a user that has been lurking CAP actively since Necturna, and never actually participates here. They just read the discussions. And when I say "read the discussions" -- I'm talking about an AVID lurker. This person doesn't just read the fun CAP creation threads -- they are following this thread right now (which is what prompted them to comment in #cap) including my mammoth post earlier (or at least a portion of it, which is still saying something)! On top of that, this lurker also went through my mammoth Leadership Compendium post too, and recalled a specific, very applicable quote from it that pertains to this thread!

I write most of my monster novelette posts in this Policy Review forum, intending only very diehard CAP veterans to take the time to digest them. And even you guys, I understand if you choose to skip them -- considering how long and in-depth they are. But for some random lurker, who doesn't even post or vote in CAP, to intelligently process my long-winded diatribes on CAP -- I think that says a LOT about the deep interest we generate here in this little fakemon project of ours.

Keep that in mind as you post here and we make decisions. Many are watching....
 
Last edited:

HeaLnDeaL

Let's Keep Fighting
is an Artistis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a CAP Contributor Alumnus
To me, this topic is increasingly looking like a two front battle.

So far, many of the more concrete proposals have dealt with the first front; our desire to change which metagame our future CAPmons will be built for. In summary, the reasons behind this are that OU changes during the large amount of time it takes to make a new CAP (we're building for a meta we can't keep up with) and there is some general disgruntlement with OU's tiering process in general and how the current OU is perhaps quite far removed from the actual game of Pokemon. And while centering CAP around its own metagame could help a TON with the former, so far how to get CAP to focus on the game of Pokemon is a lot more complicated and I don't think any of the proposals so far have adequately dealt with it as an issue. And I'll admit I am unsure how to go about addressing that point, other than possibly making a "fakemon game" ourselves... which is likely beyond the scope of this project... and way beyond the scope of this post.

The main point here is changing our meta of focus gets rids of our playtest fiascoes and our fruitless attempts to try to build for the OU metagame that changes faster than we can build for. But, no matter what metagame we do build for, it WILL be different from the actual game of Pokemon. And we have to accept this. We can perhaps try to minimize the difference, but it will always be there.

But beyond the front of our meta of focus, there is also the front of CAP participation and the CAP process as a social experience. As the above second log in post 42 illustrates, we should no longer try to act like CAP is a 5 star restaurant serving up 5 star competitive Pokemon on a silver platter. The five star OU superstars never really showed an interest in CAP, and their ridicule (or the ridicule of those *supposedly* acting on their behalf) has only hindered the participation of others. Like the restaurant the Melting Pot, CAP should aim to be accessible to a more casual audience. This, however, is NOT to say that we should abandon competitiveness. We want a certain level of quality and to very much attempt to create a level of quality competitiveness with our CAPmons. No one goes into the Melting Pot with the intent of screwing up their food and making something inedible. But very few people go in are expecting to get 5 star food either. I think CAP should operate under a similar basis, and I think maybe we've already been making steps towards moving in this direction. But we certainly can make more strides forward.

Like the Melting Pot, our primary "customer base" should be those seeking a social experience (albeit one involving Pokemon instead of food). To me, in order for CAP to succeed as a project the "employees" of CAP (the Moderation team and the TLT/TL) need to provide quality ingredients (quality slates for voting, quality "options" for discussion, etc) and to be able to facilitate an environment that helps foster a positive social experience. The bottom line is, we should want people to have fun. If a master chef or competitive Pokemon master walks in and starts dissing on the other participants, then the employees have to put a stop to it to preserve the social experience of others. However, if there's a rowdy crowd that is about to burn the whole building down because they have no idea what the heck they are doing, then that needs to be stopped as well. In the past, there definitely has been some PR discussion about making sure the clueless people don't burn the building down. But comparatively, there has not been a big PR mentality about making sure the know-it-alls don't buzzkill everyone else's fun time.

And in the interest of trying to foster a social experience, I do think that parts of the creation process do need to be adjusted as well. Towards the end of CAP projects, there seems to be a lot of burn out of participants. If the process is too long, then the overall experience just ends with exhaustion. Some stages, such as Stat Limits in particular, could be curtailed or even tossed out. Stat Limits has been one of our most technical stages, but the flat out truth is that people are not interested in it; perhaps it's even too technical. Quite frankly, I view Stat Limits as a leftover tumor after we got rid of our formal support of the "build triangle." This is not to say that I think we should encourage people to make stat submissions and have every submission that is 130/130/130/130/130/130 be "technically" legal. But my experiences in CAP (I was even a stat leader in CAP Navi and had to deal with this BS stage) tell me that the current Stat Limits stage is a buzzkill. It would make much more sense to have the TL and Stats Leader make intelligent comments or suggestions regarding stat limits throughout the submission phase rather than to keep a buzz killing stage alive and in the way.

My experience as the moves leader in CAP Cruci has also told me that the movesets stage is a source of buzzkill as well. I believe I made roughly 20 posts myself in the entire thread just to keep the discussion going and on track; this is way too much work for any individual to do. Quite frankly, moves this past CAP lasted way too long, and in part this might be because of end-of-CAP burnout. Towards the end of the thread, very very few people were participating in movesets. Requiring submitters to follow very strict posting guidelines when submitting movesets or even when talking about others' sets seemed like a buzzkill. No one truly even followed the rules for submitting edits to existing sets despite me making multiple posts trying to get people on track with this, and ultimately I was forced to consolidate the popular opinions and make the proper edits myself in order to accept the incorrectly edited posts and the intelligent community consensus as a whole. So, if I had to say why I think movesets is a buzzkill stage, it would be because of the excessive posting rules for the thread. The rules also were meant to discourage discussion about individual moves in favor of moveset discussion, but I truly felt that in many instances people were just interested in individual moves. Naviathan's entire concept was based around having two movesets, and therefore I think moveset discussion was better integrated there. However, we cannot expect most of our future concepts to be this way. In general, I do like the idea of coming up with movesets and having them be the basis of our competitive moves, and I like having competitive moves discussion (both attacking and non attacking) in a single thread. However, I think forcing people to write up every opinion in the context of a moveset is excessive (and a buzzkill). I think dealing with individual moves and incorporating those moves into movesets either simultaneously or right afterwards would be more ideal and would make it easier for people to participate. Of course, if go-getter individuals wished to submit or support whole movesets, I think that should be acceptable as well; really, my main concern here is not making it *required* that every competitive moveset post has to jump through hoops just to relate to a complete moveset.

CAP is a social experience, and we should try to eliminate buzzkills. There are three sources of CAP main forum buzzkills, and in the past, CAP PRC has only dealt with one-- that of the competitively ignorant folks who try to participate in competitive stages and risk burning the whole house down. However, moving forward, I would like us to continue dealing with these individuals while simultaneously stopping the 5 star battles from buzzkilling the other participants (or just stop any sort of user from putting down and making fun of others excessively within the CAP process forums, CAP IRC, or the CAP PS room) and to try to eliminate the buzzkill that happens as a result from the process's structure itself. We shouldn't let other users buzzkill on each other and we shouldn't let the process buzzkill on our participants either.

Beyond the CAP main forum, however, I do see one other HUGE potential buzzkill for CAP. It may not focus on "all" CAP participants like the above three types, but I think it would be foolish to ignore it, and quite frankly I think of it as my job to address it. Continuing to offer "threats" or whatever else against the CAP metagame players is destructive to the CAP metagame community and potentially to the CAP community as a whole. The CAP metagame has made large strides forward since the creation of the subforum, and I think destroying everything that the meta community has amassed in favor of a brand new and significantly different CAP metagame for main CAP to build for would be a huge buzzkill to the current meta players. I think during CAP Cruci, more meta players than ever before were excited and willing to participate, and I wouldn't be surprised is this was the largest group of participants during CAP Cruci. The meta players finally seem to have a home on the forums, and I'm proud of their willingness to not only participate in their own subforum, but also to branch out into main CAP. Any effort that destroys the CAP metagame as we know it will create a buzzkill. This is not to say that the meta players will not tolerate ANY change; I think the meta players are willing to be flexible to some degree, as long as the current metagame is changed a bit rather than destroyed completely.

Tying this into earlier posts and returning to the first front's issue, I think any metagame that CAP decides to build for needs to have a playerbase. Some proposed metagames to build around simply do not have a playerbase, and I think it's foolish for us to consider such metas. If no one wants to play our new metagame, then I don't see how this project can continue. From talking to Doug in particular, it does seem like having a metagame with all of our past CAPs would be ideal, as such a meta ensures each CAP can be battled with on the server. In order to keep a playerbase, I think working with current CAP metagame players, rather than against them, seems like a smart play.

There's another thought I want to bring up before closing this post, and this is very much influenced by what Doug said in an earlier conversation--we want to make "real" "competitive" "Pokemon."

One of the phrases used to advertise CAP was that the CAPmons could be used in real battles on the simulator ("use them[it,etc] in REAL battles!"). This implies that they were like real Pokemon in the fact that they were battle ready. If we want to keep this idea alive, we need to keep making Pokemon that are fun and worthy of being played on a simulator. And while I have above argued that we shouldn't try to make 5 star quality mons, we need to keep in mind that this is Smogon and PS we're dealing with; we are in a competitive environment and we should aim for making good mons that are viable (and not broken) in whatever metagame we decide to build for. And ultimately, these mons WILL be used in competitive battles; this is so much more than a mere flavor fanboy project. How we wish to emulate "Pokemon" is a lot trickier. We've taken steps as a project to only use the mechanics that GameFreak provides to keep our creations like real Pokemon; we've banned custom moves and abilities. Is this enough? I'm not sure. Maybe it is. But I think that keeping the idea of real, GameFreak Pokemon alive is important as well. For me, this means creating a metagame with many of these real GameFreak Pokemon alongside our mons; a metagame with only CAPmons seems to me far too removed from the original game. Is this, then, enough? I'm still not sure. Maybe it is. I do think that following GameFreak "real" banlists, however, is not the way to go. For starters, GameFreak themselves are experimenting with multiple banlists for their online competitions, so how can we say they truly support only one banlist and that we should follow it? And even so, their most popular metagame is based around doubles play, whereas I think CAP has an interest in the singles format... However... if GameFreak is experimenting with their own multiple banlists... then who is to say that CAP has to be limited to only a single banlist as well? Personally, as a PS CAP room owner, I've received quite a few requests from Doubles players and LC players to have CAP versions of their respective metagames (who knows, maybe this means we can somehow support both an OU playtest and a CAP metagame like we currently have been doing...). I'm definitely not saying we should go crazy and stretch ourselves really thin with an all out support of multiple CAP metagames right away. However, I do think CAP has room to grow sometime in the future, if we make the steps right now to ensure that we even have a future.

Whatever we do, let's strengthen our CAP community as a whole and stop letting the people who have no interest in participating in CAP bring the rest of us down. If we can attract new people along the way, then that's fantastic for us too, but let's not try to advertise for a group of people who simply are not our customers.
 

DougJustDoug

Knows the great enthusiasms
is a Site Content Manageris a Top Artistis a Programmeris a Forum Moderatoris a Top CAP Contributoris a Battle Simulator Admin Alumnusis a Smogon Discord Contributor Alumnusis a Top Tiering Contributor Alumnusis an Administrator Alumnus
Moderator
Introduction

When I made my big post in December on Christmas Eve, I wanted to spur a new line of thinking in this thread, and hopefully get us considering much bigger, broader topics than just the question of whether we should build pokemon for a CAP metagame or not. In the back of my mind, even months ago when I very first started writing that long essay for this thread, I've always had a vague impression of a proposal for our direction. But the problem was that I couldn't put my finger on it. I couldn't form my ideas into a concrete proposal that we could take action on.

So, I posted all my thoughts and context, and put it out there for others to comment on, with the hope that the community at large could help me finalize my thinking, or, at the very least, squash the nagging notions I had in the back of my head that I couldn't really express properly as a proposal for CAP policy.

I have learned a lot from the many posts in this thread, and I've also gotten a lot of great feedback from hours and hours of discussions with people on IRC and the CAP room on PS. When HeaLnDeaL posted above, it really helped push my thinking in terms of policy, and I started forming a framework of a proposal.

But then the other day on IRC, I was chatting with Birkal at length about this thread and Theorymon popped up and joined in. Over the course of a few hours of rambling discussion, by the end of it, I realized we had stumbled on a somewhat tangible proposal.

It started with this comment by me on IRC:

"DougJustDoug: Lemme describe what I want to get out of the change in direction."

And what follows below, is an assemblage of comments (mostly mine) from that IRC discussion, packaged up into hopefully-sensible paragraph form, culminating with a hopefully-sensible policy proposal.


Class Struggle in Create-A-Pokemon

I believe Smogon has a problem similar to the U.S. problem with income inequality. (Bear with me, I realize the analogy is a little stretched...) The United States has an issue with the "disappearing middle class".

A middle class is essential to a good capitalist economy right? It's bad for the economy to be predominantly made up of a large number of people that are in poverty and a small number of elite rich. Without a healthy middle class, the divide between the rich and poor grows wider and wider, leading to all sorts of economic and societal problems. Amongst many other issues, the lower class majority feel oppressed by the elite upper class, and the elite upper class feel surrounded and put upon by the poor lower class.

That's kinda like Smogon now, in terms of competitive knowledge. If competitive knowledge and skill was money -- most Smogoners are now defined as "poor" and there are a very small number of "elite rich", if that makes sense. And by the way, even if its not true of Smogon overall -- I definitely think it applies to the Create-A-Pokemon project, which is my only concern right now.

So what CAP needs to do is re-establish a working middle class again.

CAP had a huge middle class in the early days of the project. Most of our "top contributors" were never really considered that amazing in terms of tournament battling skill. Meaning they were not ever "elite rich". But they knew about battling and were avid students of competitive pokemon. They were "working middle class battlers", so to speak.

I personally think of myself as "working middle class" when it comes to competitive pokemon overall. Although I don't battle often these days, I have a fairly extensive knowledge of past metas, mechanics, theory, and stats. And I've always considered myself to be a better teambuilder than a battler anyway, mainly because I enjoy building teams more than I enjoy actually battling with them. I'll never say I'm a great player. But I'm not a total noob either. And there are tons of other people who have little knowledge of theory or mechanics or past metas -- but they battle often in the current metas, and know plenty of tactics. Once again, these people aren't great players. But they're not total shit either. Basically, in terms of competitive knowledge and skill, there are lots of ways to make it out of the slums and into the working middle class.

But according to our current definitions and expectations in CAP -- if you aren't a current successful tournament battler -- you are below the poverty line in CAP. We have to change that. And we can't do it by just saying:
"There's a new standard for competitive respect in CAP. Here it is: <blah, blah, blah>."
Even if we could define it -- it would never work. We have to set a direction that is much more inclusive of a wider array of player profiles, which, to a lesser extent, will "blur" the definition of what is a "good battler" or not. We have to create a larger working middle class in CAP.

Ok, so my hope is that, whatever changes we make as a result of this policy thread, the intended effect is to have a wider group of people look at any given competitive CAP thread and say to themselves:
"Hey, I know a thing or two about that!"
But more importantly, when those people then post their thoughts and reasoning -- other people, even other top tournament battlers, say:
"Hmmm. They might be right or they might be wrong, but I don't know what they know, so I'll give them benefit of the doubt."
Let me give you an example of what I mean, via a conversation I had the other day in #smogon...


The Fine Line Between "Stupid" and "Clever" (yes, that is a "This is Spinal Tap" reference...)

As you may or may not know, I like the 3v3 singles format, though I haven't battled 3v3 actively since XY. I mentioned earlier in this thread that I've been hanging out on Showdown more often these days. One room I idle in is the Battle Spot room, because I want to learn more about the ORAS 3v3 strategies and teams that have emerged since the XY game.

I was on the #smogon IRC channel the other day, and Jibaku, who was/is pretty solid in 3v3 battling, happened to be in #smogon at the same time as me, when the channel started talking about Battle Spot, for whatever reason.

So on #smogon, I mentioned how the Japanese 3v3 players are really creative with their sets, and that the top Japanese players are MUCH better rating-wise than top US players. There are lots of Japanese players with 2000+ ratings. But the best US players are like 1800+. The best US player is like 400th in the world. And I was mentioning some pokemon movesets in 3v3 that blew my mind.

For example, a 2000+ player was running Impish bulky MegaMedicham, which looks like a noob gag to the average Smogon OU player. But its a legit mon in Battle Spot singles apparently. Not top used or anything. But there's a guy with a 2000+ rating, which is fucking hard to achieve -- running that mon and set. I also mentioned I saw conversation about Torrent Tspikes Greninja and thought it was for lulz. And it turns out it was really a thing in 3v3. Other battlers in the channel were having a hard time believing my claims about Medicham and Greninja, and Jibs stepped in and validated that they were real and explained why. Everyone clammed up a bit and kinda thought,
"Wow, OK, I just don't know that metagame at all..."

Don't get me wrong, the 3v3 meta is not that completely weird. Top mons are Chomp, MKang, TFlame, etc. -- all the usual badasses with the sets you know and love. But there's a lot of stuff in the meta that seems really stupid to other people that aren't familiar with the Battle Spot game. The point is that "stupid" and "clever" are local to the metagame being played.


A Wider Appeal

In CAP, I'd like to appeal to players that know something about battling, but I'm not terribly concerned which basis they are coming from with that knowledge. And if you think about it, the people that really make real Pokemon (y'know, Nintendo and Game Freak) -- they don't build mons for any one game. They build pokemon for all games.

I'd like us to build CAP mons for "all games", and thus we can appeal to a huge base of players that know about competitive pokemon. And because of that broad appeal -- we could neuter the criticism and toxic vibe of the "elite rich" in any one metagame, because it won't be as easy to definitely call out and insult others that come from a different metagame base of expertise.

That's the thing with our current definition of "knowledgeable" in CAP when it comes to competitive pokemon -- We have tied it to people that battle well in OU tournaments. As if building CAP pokemon on the forum is analogous to balancing in OU, where you gain credibility and voting rights by winning real battles.

But the CAP forum project is, and always will be -- ALMOST PURE THEORYMON.

And we have allowed a set of definitions and standards of contribution in CAP that make it SEEM like we are engaged in a metagame balancing exercise and need contributors that are good tournament battlers to validate every little thing -- almost like posting in CAP is equivalent to battling in a suspect test. But it isn't the same thing at all. One is pure theory (CAP), and the other is pure experimentation (suspect testing).

CAP is suffering because the creation project is all theorymon, yet people are treating it more like an experimental suspect test, and holding CAP posts to the same standard of battling skill required to vote in suspect tests.

That is the problem that I want to solve with a new direction.


Proposal Part 1: New Direction

So what if CAP put itself squarely in the shoes of GameFreak?

What if we built mons that we wanted to be "popular"? With the specific twist that we want them to be popular with competitive players. So no cutemons or contest mons or whatever. But we won't specify any particular competitive metagame at the outset of a project.

We would build mons that follow good general competitive archetypes, and have some way to focus here and there on maybe some specific things that are good for one meta or the other. For example, we might give it Telepathy, if the build otherwise seems like it could be good for Doubles. But we don't start out saying,
"This will be a Doubles CAP".​
In fact, maybe we outright set the standard,
"The CAP mon will be designed for play in multiple metagames."

We should only consider metagames that are "cartridge-legal", meaning we won't build for games like Hackmons or other games that are not consistent with normal Pokemon mechanics and game elements, other than the CAP pokemon being created at the time. Oddly enough, this stipulation would actually preclude us from targeting the CAP metagame as a design consideration, because the CAP metagame is not cartridge-legal. The point of this clarification is to keep each individual CAP as firmly centered on the real game of Pokemon as possible.

And when it comes to the Smogon ruleset -- we leave the tiering of the CAP mon TO BE DETERMINED VIA A PLAYTEST. We make a pokemon and then playtest to figure out where it should be tiered in the Smogon ruleset. But we also playtest to see if it works in other metas, based on theorymon predictions. So in this way, our CAP mons will be built on good intelligent fundamentals that are kinda known to be good by anyone that is experienced with ANY metagame. But our playtest decides WHERE the CAP is successful -- not IF it is successfull in OU (like now).

That is a very key point. With this proposal, we basically can't make a CAP that objectively "fails". If anything, it will "succeed" in a lower tier in Smogon -- unless we are just total idiots and make a Delibird or whatever.

The point is, that people won't be so busy calling everyone else stupid for four months straight, as we make the pokemon. Then when we playtest the pokemon, we can reach out to different metas and say:

"Hey we think the latest CAP we made, it might be good in your meta. We're gonna run a little playtest with it in your meta. Wanna come join the fun?"

I think people would get into that. We'd make our project INCLUSIVE and INVITING to others -- not the other way around. As the CAP gets made, if it is shaping up to possibly be good in some specific meta -- we could reach out and ask that meta's leaders to post in CAP and give their opinion. And if they post:

"Nope, you guys got it all wrong. This thing will be shit in our meta because of <whatever>."

OK, fine. But my guess is that any meta other than OU, they won't say that. They'd say:

"Right now, it won't work because of <whatever>. But if you do A, B, and C -- it would be really cool in our meta. In fact, I'd like to hang around and lobby for those things here, because I'd love to see our meta get a new mon."

And then after the playtests, guess what we do? We throw it into the CAP meta, and play it there forever after.

This proposal intentionally does NOT make any assumptions about how the CAP metagame is structured now or in the future. I'll leave that discussion to another policy thread, if necessary. Right now, I am not concerned about the CAP metagame or making a new metagame, only with how CAP pokemon are made and playtested. So, other than the fact that I assume a CAP metagame of some kind will exist, it will NOT be a design concern for the CAP forum project as a result of this proposal.


Problems and Questions with the New Direction

Concepts aren't working nowadays. If we change direction as I proposed above, it's a necessity to change how we approach concepts. But I think we need much more general concepts anyway, regardless of whether we change direction or not. We just can't sustain setting out to make specific pokemon in CAP any longer. I think the specific stuff needs to "emerge" from a general direction at the outset.

Have you heard of the lean startup business concept of a "pivot"? Basically, you startup a business with a good general idea. Then after you get real feedback from real customers (in the form of sales or whatever) you "pivot" to take advantage of what is really working -- not necessarily the strategy you wrote up in your business plan. As you continue to "pivot" based on real business success -- you end up in a market with a product, but probably not exactly what you intended when you first began.

A lean startup management philosophy is, "Pick a good direction and get moving, and then pivot well until you succeed." So a common question asked by startup founders/leaders/investors as they go along is the famous "Pivot or Persevere?" question. Persevere in the same direction, or Pivot based on new information? Kinda applies to CAP, I think.

So, if we're not building Pokemon for OU, and instead just "seeing how it turns out" in the playtest -- how would we handle a step like stats?

I think we should aim for a power level of "good pokemon" in terms of stats, ability, etc. But the idea that "OU" = "good" (as I detailed in my massive post earlier) is an ancient way of looking at the game of Pokemon. Nowadays, there are mons with awesome stats and abilities hanging down in NU. So I don't think we need to say, "This will be RU level in stats and ability", or anything that specific. We try to make a "good pokemon" and then see where it falls in the tiers.

That's really one of the big things with this proposal. There is such a fine line now between OU and NU, in terms of build and all that -- that CAP simply cannot hit that mark with any accuracy with our process. I think CAP is so specific right now, that it has no idea what it's doing. And that's not just CAP's fault -- the current metagame / tiering philosophy is all over the place too, in terms of what is bannable or not. I think CAP has no clear idea of what constitutes "too good" or even "good enough" for any tiered meta really.

How will CAP discussion threads play out? Would it cause strife to have different metagames all vying for their metagame in these threads?

That is a real concern for me. That we'll have factions pulling for really specific things for every little meta -- and the resulting pokemon will be a "Frankenstein's monster" in the end.

However, different groups factioning for differing ideals is a not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it is GOOD for CAP "business" if people get interested and rally together. But being a project that touts itself as a community effort that emphasizes communication, I'm not sure if factioning fits in here. At that point, it becomes a "who votes for what" sort of gig.


Proposal Part 2: Concept Changes

With those questions in mind, let me present how I think concepts could be handled to rein in the "Frankenstein Effect" of different factions.

I think there are a finite number of good general "archetypes" for all competitive pokemon. We could spend some time and just define all those "competitive archetypes", and I don't really care how many we choose to define. I'm thinking an archetype will be finer-grained than just "Sweeper" or "Wall". But more general than "Slow Hazard setter with one status move and the ability to setup physical". Anywhere in between there is fine with me. Just list 'em out. And if we miss some, we can add to the list as we go along in the future.

We will pick one of those archetypes as the "Concept" for a CAP.

With that archetype in place, factions can go nuts with lobbying or whatever. But we will try to stay in the bounds of the archetype. If we have limits on movepools or stats or whatever, based on the archetype, that's good too. It just helps set the boundaries. But don't get too obsessed with controlling the specifics of voting, because that never works anyway.

The advantage to this proposal is that the CAP process would almost not change at all. We will still have a "Concept". We will still have people that determine appropriate slates based on that concept (ie. archetype). And the slates will prevent or discourage "Frankenstein" from happening.

Our CAP mons may end up a little more diverse than current CAP mons -- but that's a GOOD THING. It makes playtesting an adventure in discovery -- not simply a chance to claim failure and point fingers and say, "I told you this would be shit!"

I'm not saying CAP discussions will be easy to manage, but hopefully it will take out some of the toxicity in CAP, as people call everyone else idiots. Because we will be significantly lowering the bar to be just "good general competitive pokemon", and at the same time RAISING the bar in terms of knowledge about specific metagames.

If I post:

"Hey I think A, B, and C would really work in 3v3."

I am opening the door for someone like Jibaku or Theorymon to come in and say:

"Nope, you seem to be forgetting about <whatever> in the Battle Spot meta, and your idea won't work, Doug."

Meaning, just because "general pokemon" is a lower bar, it doesn't mean we won't invite comments about top strategy in metagame play. We just don't restrict it to only OU metagame play. And, for the record, comments about quality OU strategy will STILL be welcome in CAP, and any top OU minds will be valued contributors to CAP. But they won't be the ONLY minds we value in CAP any longer.


Summary

Ok, so I've rambled on and on -- but I've put out there everything that has been flying through my head in terms of wanting to make a proposal. I've had a hard time figuring out how to present it -- because it's kinda all over the place.

If there is any unifying theme to my proposal, I'd say I am proposing we more intentionally put ourselves in the shoes of GameFreak and try to "make a pokemon" like they do, but with a competitive bias.

Going in a more generalized direction is a good thing for CAP, as it should widen our audience and appeal and encourage more variety and contributions. But this may break some precedent in terms of CAP philosophy.

This would be a shift in direction as to how we build competitive pokemon, and how we even have conversations about them. Process-wise, this proposal isn't that disruptive. But in terms of mentality and culture -- I see it as a big seismic shift. The CAP thread titles probably change very little, if at all. But the post content would be night-and-day different.

Birkal and I have concerns about how to prevent CAP threads turning into shouting matches between metagames. Perhaps we would need to implement new rules, or maybe not. Perhaps we restore Likes to help show community consensus? It's a possibility. We can work that stuff out later in this thread or others to follow. For now, I just want to hear feedback from others on the major features of this proposal, which can be summarized as:

TL;DR Proposal:
  • We build pokemon intended to be generally useful in competitive pokemon battles, according to a known set of good "competitive archetypes" that are applicable to multiple competitive metagames and rulesets.

  • The "Concept" for a given CAP project will be one of those general "competitive archetypes".

  • The specific direction of each competitive aspect of a CAP pokemon and which competitive games it is expected to play best in -- will unfold and potentially change over the course of CAP discussion threads, but will be guided to stay within the general archetype defined by the Concept.

  • Good general competitive knowledge will be valued in CAP discussions. Expert tournament battling skill is appreciated, but not expected. Disrespect or scorn for any metagame or battling format will not be tolerated.

  • One or more playtests will be held to determine which tiers, metagames, and rulesets are most appropriate for the CAP pokemon just created.

  • After the playtests, the pokemon will become part of the CAP metagame. But this policy proposal makes no provisions for how the CAP metagame is structured now or in the future.
 
Last edited:

Deck Knight

Blast Off At The Speed Of Light! That's Right!
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Top CAP Contributor Alumnusis a Top Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus
Just because I brought up the number of battles previously, I'm loving the Usage Stats that just came out:

CAP Battles: 5671
Crucibelle Playtest: 2036

Having both in existence simultaneously led to more battles for both (CAP compared to last month, Crucibelle to other playtests). A marked improvement!
My short commentary on Doug's proposal:

How do we determine valid legal archetypes? One of the things that has been valuable about the concept system is that it gives us a central focus. Take Stratagem, Mollux, and Crucibelle - the focus there was on the contours of typing and how to support that, in three differing ways. I still think there's a place to take concepts a little bit further than, say, "Ultimate Bulk Up User." At the same time, before we had concepts that's basically what Revenankh became for that metagame. I think there should be a way to capture the best of both of those worlds, I'm just not sure what it looks like. I'd call it a sub-concept, and I wouldn't necessarily mind doing two discussions/polls, the first on "Archetype" and the second on "Sub-Concept."

Edit: Might as well throw a few things against the wall and see if we can clarify our direction by working through something somewhat concrete.

Archetype Descriptor Pool:

Purpose:

Revenge Killer
Stall-Breaker
Sweeper
Tank
Utility
Wall
Wall-Breaker

Style:
Hyper-Offensive
Offensive
Defensive
Balanced
Stall

Physical
Special
Mixed

Cleric
Support
Stat Boosting
Pivot
Win-Con

The broad idea of this pool is that we choose One element from Purpose and One to Three from Style. A few examples being:

Wall Mixed Pivot Support (ex: Mandibuzz)
Stall-Breaker Pivot Support (ex: Gliscor)
Sweeper Physical Win-Con (ex: Mega-Charizard X)
Sweeper Stat-Boosting Physical Support (ex: Excadrill)
Tank Physical Stat-Boosting (ex: Quagsire)
Tank Mixed Stat-Boosting (ex: Mega-Slowbro)
Utility Pivot Support (ex: Amoonguss)
Revenge Killer Hyper-Offensive Physical (ex: Weavile)

Terms generally follow the Pokemon Dictionary we have on site. I note that you could technically add more elements to these Pokemon because of what they can do, e.g. Weavile CAN use Swords Dance but for all practical purposes it's there to immediately KO whatever was KO'd on your side before it. Excadrill CAN be a Win-Con (and often is), but its chief niche is the fact it simultaneously scares out foes with high offense and can Rapid Spin away hazards. The Scarf set doesn't stat-boost but the LO set does. Again, none of this is perfect but it's a good starting place to be "specific enough."

Also noteworthy about the way this is set up is that the Purpose is intended to be clarifying. You can easily argue the following roles for Ferrothorn:

Tank Mixed Stall
Tank Mixed Support
Utility Pivot Support
Utility Stall Support

There's a lot of overlap here, but the focus can result in different kinds of Pokemon, just to work this out by example:

Tank Mixed Stall (ex: Ferrothorn, Hippowdon, Skarmory)
These Pokemon have excellent mixed defense, credible offense against relevant targets, and can either lay multiple hazards, phaze, or both.
Tank Mixed Support (ex: Ferrothorn, Clefable, Cresselia)
These Pokemon have excellent mixed defense but have more generic supporting capabilities like paralysis, Leech Seed, Healing Wish, etc.
Utility Pivot Support (ex: Ferrothorn, Amoonguss, Latias)
These Pokemon primarily provide support for their team but can also pivot in repeatedly to keep providing it.
Utility Stall Support (ex: Ferrothorn, Forretress, Skarmory)
These Pokemon generally have high defenses conducive to Stall but are primarily there for the additional hazard laying and phazing options than tanking every hit.

Like any categorization system you can quibble with the choices, but this is at least a framework.
 
Last edited:

Birkal

We have the technology.
is a Top Artistis a Top CAP Contributoris a Top Smogon Media Contributoris a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Admin Alumnusis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnus
I've commented on Doug's proposal extensively on IRC, but I'd like to consolidate those thoughts into a post here. I have a few concerns with the overall proposal that I've been mulling over the past few days, from both a moderator's perspective and a participant's perspective. For example, as a moderator, I'm worried how this will change voting patterns; it would be much easier for a community to bandwagon and stuff the votes. As a participant, I'm worried that our conversations would be indecipherable due to the varying perspectives of different metagames. There are a lot of valid concerns to have about this proposal.

The more I pondered these worries, the less in favor of the proposal I became. But recently, I took a step back to remember why I even made this topic last July (holy crap). It was because CAP is not in a good place right now, and something needs to change. When I started to view this proposal as a soft reset of CAP, it began to make a lot more sense. Will voting look different? Heck yeah, because communities will be rallying together for their community's best interests. But is that inherently a bad thing? I'd argue no -- in fact, it brings in more participants to CAP and gets people interested. Will our conversations look different? Of course, they won't look like current CAP conversations anymore. But remember, some users aren't even happy with our conversations anymore, so why not change up the entire dynamic?

It's the difference between arguing about how to best build a Pokemon, and how to best build a project on how to best build a Pokemon. I believe that most of us come here to do the former -- we have cool ideas for a Pokemon and want to make it happen. But when the latter happens (as it has lately), we get frustrated with the project because of our varying ideals. Ultimately, we're here to make Pokemon. Doug's proposal, while extreme, takes that ultimate goal into account to a far greater degree than our current setup. We can sit here and worry about all of the potential pitfalls, or we can give it a whirl and see what happens. This reminds me of when we started the TLT: there were a lot of concerns, but we went ahead with it, and it's served the project very well. We even reflected on it afterwards to determine if we should more forward with it.

Let's make this change. Let's get people from all communities interested in CAP again with this soft reset of rules and direction. There will be lots of kinks to work out, absolutely, but it will shift our conversations from the state of the CAP project itself to what we actually came here to do in the first place: make Pokemon.


I'd also like to take a brief moment to thank Deck Knight for refraining from the use of confusing abbreviations in his post. Thank you.
 

jas61292

used substitute
is a Community Contributoris a Top CAP Contributoris a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
To start, let me say that I do really agree with a lot of Doug's reasoning regarding the problems we have. That said I am not a fan at all of the overall proposal. I have no issue with the mindset that we shouldn't really be ever "failing" since there are a variety of ways and places that we could be good. However, I truly believe that if we go that path and eliminate a target environment, the project will be a total mess. I'm not concerned generally with power level or anything like that. If a mon isn't good enough for OU, it might be for UU or RU. That's not an issue to me. Even if they are different, the types of strategies are the same, and ultimately we a Pokemon made for one Smogon tier will find a niche in at least one of them, even if it is not the one we aimed for. My concern is when you bring in things that are not really comparable. Battle Spot, Doubles, VGC, etc. All of these function under completely different formats, beyond simply the available Pokemon. The types of strategies that work and are effective are completely different, and with different people taking different formats into account, we would end up with a tug of war in the process that would be an absolute mess. And that's not even touching on the issue of leadership. How is one supposed to lead when you have no real goal of the kind of things your are trying to lead us to? And even if that is not a concern, how is one supposed to judge if arguments are good for usage in one format, unless they really know all formats? It is a burden on the leadership positions far greater than we already have. And believe me, that burden is already quite high.

Furthermore, the playtest itself would be a nightmare. How the hell would we work to test it in multiple metagames? Either we try a lot of metagames, and none of them see any significant number of battles, making any conclusions even more skewed than they are currently, or we don't test nearly as many, have to work out a fair way to determine which to test, and then end up with frustrated and disappointed participants who may have worked to mold the Pokemon for the metagame of their choice, just to find out that they will never have a chance to actually test it.

Ultimately, I agree with Doug that we should be looking for people who simply know the game, rather than experts, since this project is, after all, simply about theory. That said, the game of Pokemon has many facets, and even people who "know the game" won't be able to cohesively make any Pokemon if the lack a frame of reference. That frame of reference can be more broad than "Current Gen Smogon OU," and honestly I don't care too much what that frame of reference is. But what it cannot be is "any frame of reference you want."

So what do I think does constitute a strict enough frame of reference? Well, I have been thinking about this a lot, and what I have determined is that, in my opinion, we need to have a definite format, but not a definite metagame. When I say format, what I mean is a consistent definition of two things: number of Pokemon per team, and number of Pokemon in battle. 6v6 Singles would be a format, while any subdivision of that, be it RU, Ubers, or a no rules local wireless connection battle, would be a metagame within that format. I personally believe that in any given format, the ideal strategies are metagame independent. Sure, you might see certain strategies in some metagames and not others throughout a given format, but only because some metagames lack the necessary tools to pull off certain strategies. Not because those strategies would not be good.

I sort of think of it as similar to different leagues or levels within a sport. Specifically, with the super bowl coming up, the example that came to mind was the difference between NFL and college football. Yeah, the way games play out may be different between the levels, but usually only because it is not possible for teams at the lower level to pull off everything that a top level team can do. While it may not be the case in practice, in theory at least, most of the same strategies work regardless of whether you are at the pro level or not, and people who are fans of one level could most certainly have meaningful conversation with fans of the other about the sport as a whole. Now, on the other hand, a different format is more like a different sport (continuing with the previous example, the specific thing that popped to mind for me here was rugby). It may have many similar elements, and similar goals, but ultimately it is a different game, and you cannot act like the two games are one and expect fans of both to have meaningful conversation about "their game" when they are not in fact talking about the same thing.

Anyways, I guess what I am trying to say is that I believe that we need to have uniformity in the types of strategies that people are discussing in order to have a coherent project, and as such, that we cannot simply have a free for all of any and all metagames and still expect good things to come. We certainly can, and probably should, move away from being extremely metagame specific, but I believe there is a limit to how far we can go, and I fear that if we cross that line, we will end up in an even worse place than we started.
 

Da Pizza Man

Pizza Time
is a Pre-Contributor
One problem I have with Doug's proposal is that it is sort of unpredictable how a Pokemon is going to preform in a tier until we actually put that mon in the tier. Even if we all of the information that is possible to get on that Pokemon, we can't be 100% sure how its going to do, I mean that is why we have playtest anyways, to see how our creation does and whether or not it achieved its concept. Unless we have put a Pokemon in a certain meta, it's going to be hard to tell what meta it will fit best in, so how are we going to decide which meta to test our CAP in? Think of it like going to the movie theater without any idea on what movie your going to watch.

Take this for example, when Hoopa-U's stat spread was released, everybody and their gcrandma was saying that it was going to be broken as shit, and there were even plans of having a suspect for hoopa-u, however, as it was introduced to the meta and the hype for it died down, Hoopa-U showed to be a very balanced pokemon. This also works the other way around. Recently, PU has just banned Vigoroth with a humongous 96.5% in favor of ban. However, Vigoroth was not much of a problem in the PU metagame until a couple of months before it was banned, hell it even dropped down to FU.

While both of these examples obviously have to do more with balance than our Concepts, I think that this can also be applied to concepts as well, seeing as how even entire roles Pokemon have can differ between metagames. For instance, what if we tried to do Volkraken's concept in 1v1 rather than OU? While the playtest would tell us that it would be a failure, we are working with an entirely different metagame, so we really wouldn't be able to tell if it achieved its concept in 1v1, despite failing it in OU, thanks to the differences in the metagames.

I'm not saying I disagree with Doug's proposal (Honestly apart from the "working with different metagames" part, I agree with it) but I can't say that it is exactly what we need either
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 1, Guests: 0)

Top