Policy Review Pre-evo Poll [Postponed]

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I figured we should get the PR threads underway. This should be a short and simple one, so let's get it out of the way. My proposal is to do the Pre-evo Poll (the one deciding how many pre-evos a CAP Pokémon will have) before the movepool discussions. I think that this will remove a lot of ambiguity in the flavour of movepool and Pokédex submissions. Deciding that there will be at least one pre-evo opens up the "pre-evo only moves" option for movepool submitters, as well as justify move repetition (e.g. having a move at level 1 and level 7). Deciding that there will be no pre-evos also makes Pokédex entries mentioning babies a lot more justifiable.
 

Birkal

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Yep, this is a no brainer, in my opinion. Just for clarification, this isn't suggesting that we start making the pre-evo at this point. It simply means that we decide on a number before proceeding to movepool. Makes sense!
 

DougJustDoug

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The pre-evo should not have any bearing on the competitive CAP we are making at the time we make it. Pre-evo's are pure flavor and just for fun. The minute we start legitimizing pre-evo concerns and accepting that it may impact something competitive like movepool is a really bad idea, IMO. I know the suggestion here is just to make flavor more compatible, but I don't see it working out that way. I see this basically as opening up pre-evo discussions when we are right in the thick of trying to finish out our pokemon.

Stuff like pre-evos are fun and all, but can we please leave it as a purely flavor/fanboy exercise after our competitive CAP is complete? If there are some things in the CAP that make it difficult on pre-evo flavor -- so what? We already have people clamoring for us to try and juggle competitive stuff on the regular CAP because they seem to think we're trying to make competitive pre-evos afterwards for Little Cup or something. And we have to keep squashing that kind of discussion and remind everyone that CAP is about our competitive OU fakemons, not the cute baby pokemon we make in between projects for fun.

We need to build our CAP pokemon pretty much in complete isolation of everything else in CAP, including previous CAPs and prevos. It's the only way we can really focus on the competitive concept. CAP already has to juggle a ton of sequential steps and try to reach some sort of cohesive whole in the end. That's hard enough without also stuffing irrelevant things like pre-evo concerns in the mix too.

I know this comes off a bit harsh, but it's because we have worked for a long time to make our process efficient for pursuing our main project goals. Stuff like this decreases that efficiency and focuses on the wrong thing.
 

jas61292

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I would like to agree with capefeather and Birkal on this one. Honestly, I see absolutely no downside to it, and multiple benefits. Not only does this help improve flavor and give more options to movepool creators, but it also streamlines the prevo process by letting us know right from the beginning what, if anything, we are doing.

While I acknowledge DougJustDoug's concerns, I do not believe there is anything wrong with this. As Doug said, prevos should not have any bearing on the competitive aspects of a CAP. However I really don't see how this has any actual bearing on the competitive portions of CAP. We are not making any prevos before the competitive stuff is done. We are not allowing moves or abilities to be chosen because of a prevo. As the prevo will be completely non-existant at the time, there is not even prevo flavor to worry about.

Honestly, the only single thing that it can effet is how a Pokemon's movepool is structured. And not anything competitive about the movepool. Flavor aspects of the movepool. It has less effect on competitiveness than the art stage, and just like the art stage, it helps make the competitive parts of CAP flavorful as well.

I feel like there is absolutely nothing negative that can come out of this, so I really think we have no reason not to do it.
 
I know that pre-evos are supposed to be a fanboy exercise. However, I think that the existence of pre-evos is a legitimate part of the main project's flavour. I'm not sure of how to address this, if not to have a poll on it. Maybe have the movepool submitter decide, and vote on one or two if the winning submission implies a pre-evo? I'd just like movepool submissions to be able to be more flexible in their flavour without possibly having to be unrealistic to get the competitive stuff done "right". On the other hand, it might compel people to vote based on that flavour.
 
Sorry guys but I actually agree with Doug on this one. What major benefits do we get from this? The most we get is extremely minor flavour benefits at the cost of lengthening the main process and potentially encuraging people to build the movepools more in mind competitively for the pre-evolution. In addition I actually wanted to talk about some pre-evo poll changes that might end up making it longer so that two pre-evos have more of a fair shake, but I'll talk about that later.

First off, movepool. The most people will get out of this is a few structural tweaks to the start of their movepool. Templates like stone evolutions are still completely off the table because to add pre-evolution moves to their movepool is poll-jumping. This really isn't worth the day or two we have to stop and decide pre-evolutions.

Also, Dex entries. There's actually no problem here at all. At worst people won't be able to make direct references to pre-evolutions by name. Referencing baby Pokémon for either a single stage or a multi stage Pokémon is perfectly fine. Kangaskhan, Bastiodon and Nidoqueen are testiment to this.

Anyway, since we have a pre-evo poll thread, I'd like to talk about changing the voting procedure so that the first vote is between no pre-evo and pre-evo(s). This way people who want a pre-evolution don't have to split their votes between one and two.
 

DHR-107

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I'm with Doug and Wyv... We gain nothing from having a Prevo's vote apart from some flavour stuff to do with those evolutions. This also creates a lot of problems with the process itself, in such that the way the Pokémon evolves must also be decided (as this then goes onto affect movepools).

Each CaP is just that. The CaP. We could not have Prevos at all the the main CaP idea would be exactly the same. It's pure flavour fun. The fact people actually make stat spreads etc with Little Cup in mind is frankly ridiculous. AFAIK, the prevos aren't even implemented anywhere to use.
 

bugmaniacbob

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I don't have much of a problem with moving the Pre-evo poll, except that I don't want to have to wait another 24-48 hours before moving on to the next stage of the CAP Process proper. This delay isn't really necessary, and I'd rather the CAP Project was prevented from stagnating, even if it is only for two days, as I can see interest waning even in a brief period, as we are so close to the end at that point. You may well say "but we can run the pre-evo poll at the same time as t<x> part of the process or something" and yes, we could. But I don't think that I want to see two totally different parts of the CAP operating at the same time where such a thing isn't necessary (art threads don't count) - as far as I can tell, it didn't work *that* well with Tomohawk.

Oh and I'm not entirely sure what we're trying to fix here since movepools can dictate the flavour of the pre-evolution just as well as vice-versa. Note that adding in pre-evolution moves renders the movepool stage of the pre-evo process somewhat null.

Also:

Wyv said:
Anyway, since we have a pre-evo poll thread, I'd like to talk about changing the voting procedure so that the first vote is between no pre-evo and pre-evo(s). This way people who want a pre-evolution don't have to split their votes between one and two.
Practically speaking, this wouldn't make much difference to the results of the poll, but I'd be inclined to support as it would probably tend to favour a pre-evo being created more than the current method.
 
I was really hoping Asylum Rhapsody or someone else would point out Nidoqueen and Bastiodon during the project... I posted precedents not just to strengthen my own argument but also to encourage people to do the same to strengthen theirs.

Anyway, if pre-evos should have no bearing on the project, then I think we should go all the way on that. Assumptions of existence/nonexistence of pre-evos should not count as poll-jumping. I say this because there have been a lot of concerns about polljumping the possible pre-evo projects for CAP 3, and if we really take the position that the pre-evo should not affect the main project at all, I'd rather have it so that we do not have to have said concerns at all. For all intents and purposes during the main project, the pre-evo project(s) should not exist. If the winning submission ends up deciding the existence of pre-evos, so be it.

I'm not sure if we "officially" consider pre-evo assumptions poll-jumping, so maybe in the end this is just symbolic. My main concern is to remove unnecessary restrictions on movepool submitters.

On changing the poll itself: I agree with this. "One" and "Two" are so related that it's probably worth the higher likelihood of this "stage" taking up two polls.
 

Deck Knight

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Gonna side with making the pre-vo poll Yes or No and then doing Stage afterward, but not putting it before movepool.

The problem with trying to insert the notion of a pre-vo into the middle of competitive discussion is it quickly derails the track of the CAP with a flavor element that isn't really central. The big problem here is that movepool and this poll are both heavily reliant (whether we like it or not) on the outcome of Art. Art may not be a competitive portion battling wise, but it is an insanely competitive portion of the CAP, and artists will tailor their art to say "wouldn't this look cool with a pre-vo" in IRC if that is the next immediate stage. They won't do it on the forums since it's polljumping, but it will start to bias art in certain ways.

I think it's honestly neutral in regards to flavor. You can argue any CAP we've made could have any number of evos, most of the ones after we established a legit pre-vo process have been one or none. We've never done two because it seems so daunting, and maybe this would help to address that, but ultimately I think the community handles flavor well enough as it is.
 

nyttyn

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As a movepool submitter, I think we should still keep pre-evos after Movepool, as its enough of a pain in the butt as it is to keep track of movepool acquisition levels and such, pre-evos would just make it worse.

Plus, it lengthens the process and makes people start building competitively for the pre-evos as well, which as it stands is kind of a taboo nono. Not that I really agree with this taboo nono notion, but its something worth considering.
 

Stratos

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Oh boy first PRC post, warning: lot of (rambling) explanation will come before position

I've always had some qualms with the way that CAP handles poll-jumping as a whole. Obviously, we need to segment the process. Otherwise, there would be so much sheer uncertainty floating around at all times that we could never get anything done. But sometimes there are places where the whole is more than the sum of its parts - where the stat spread /just won't work/ without this ability, or that typing is just so perfect for the concept but only if it gets this move. In those cases, i think that the voters choosing one means they de facto agree to the other, and yes it's polljumping, but it's integral to a hollistic Pokemon. Otherwise it looks like we took a doll (nothing personal voodoom) and stapled on all these separate sheets of paper in an attempt to make it a Pokemon. This happened in this project as recently as RD's stat spread which assumed Drought (don't ask me how one got in without the other).

However, while competitive-competitive links follow easily, linking flavor and competitive pieces together is more fuzzy. Competitive is supposed to be completely unaffected by flavor, unlike by other competitive portions. By voting for a movepool which has the best competitive aspect but perhaps does not agree with their flavor ambitions, a voter is de facto ushering in a flavor they disagree with because they preferred the competitive aspect - which is supposed to be the sole factor of a movepool vote, as it's competitive.

Unfortunately, we don't have perfectly competitive voters, so that line of logic throws us for a loop. In a utopia, voters in competitive portions would place aside all flavor concerns, but as we see from many users voting against Cape's movepool purely because they disliked the event flavor, that ain't what happens. As someone who cherishes the competitive aspect of CAP, letting a competitive submission lose because of flavor reasons is a cardinal sin. If someone voted against a movepool because it implied a prevo and they didn't want one (or vice versa) it would be counterproductive to making the best Pokemon possible. Furthermore, i wouldn't want the userbase voting in a movepool that is the best competitively but has a flavor they almost all hate. It's easy to adjust movepool flavor to fit a prevo's existence without changing anything competitive about the movepool - and then we're removing one confounding factor in a movepool vote, which is always a good thing.

So yes, i'm in favor of an early prevo vote, because it helps contribute to the best competitively minded Pokemon possible with the least accidental flavor-based interference
 

Birkal

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Yo I am just gonna straight up lock this. CAP3 showed us that the position of the current pre-evo poll isn't exactly optimal, but it still works. CAP4 showed us that, if we are going to have any say as a community about what amount of pre-evos we have, it basically needs to be done before movepool. CAP4 has essentially been given an amount of pre-evos simply by virtue of its stats and movepool. This is something I'd definitely like to revisit before CAP5, because it's a big issue that is poorly defined and dealt with at the moment. The overall question of "when do we decide pre-evo amount" should be considered, but I don't think we will be able to fully answer that question until some other topics are resolved.

Obviously capefeather, you are free to unlock this at any point you see fit. It's something I'd like to revisit before CAP5, so if you haven't opened it again by that point and reignited the discussion, then I will.
 
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