Hello everyone!
I've already had the opportunity to chat with many of you on both PS! and IRC regarding Doug's proposal, and now I'd like to make an official post here with my opinions on the matter, as well as my thoughts on a few other related topics.
First off, I'd like to say that there are several aspects about Doug's proposal that I really enjoy, and I agree with a lot with the general sentiment of his post regarding the social aspect of CAP and "reestablishing a working middle class." So, rather than restate everything Doug said that I'm in agreement with, I'd like to elaborate further on the benefits of this proposal, as well as touch on some of the specifics that I foresee as potential issues and hopefully provide ideas as to how they may be fixed or avoided.
Scope of this proposal -- Is it too wide?
jas61292 touched on one of my biggest concerns with the proposal quite nicely, which is the scope of designing a CAP for potential use in multiple metagames. Don't get me wrong; I definitely feel that the increased potential for participation and contribution from competitive players of varying backgrounds would be simply amazing for CAP. We end up with a project that is easier to participate in, offers more opportunities for players to contribute their metagame knowledge, and in my opinion, we end up with a more fun project as a result! However, I do feel that the proposal in its current state risks being too broad in this sense for many of the reasons jas has already outlined. I'll attempt to elaborate on this issue further.
Competitive Pokemon Knowledge on Varying Scales
To start, I'll analyze myself as a competitive Pokemon player, purely for the sake of example. I've been on Smogon for almost three years now and have played on Pokemon Showdown for even longer than that, and I'd consider myself to have a adequate working knowledge of general competitive Pokemon. If we get more specific than general competitive Pokemon knowledge, I consider myself, first and foremost, a 6v6 singles player. As a result, I'm most comfortable playing and learning metagames that fall under this classification. As far as specific metagames I've battled in and learned, I'd consider myself most knowledgeable and experienced with Little Cup and the CAP metagame. I still ladder in several other formats to a good extent, including various doubles formats. In fact, I've obtained voting reqs in Doubles OU before, but despite this, I still wouldn't consider myself all that familiar or well-versed with the more intricate strategies unique to the various doubles formats, or any other category of formats outside of 6v6 singles for that matter. I'm usually at a loss when it comes to teambuilding for these formats due to the presence of various strategies that are unique to these formats, thus being absent from 6v6 singles. While it's true that "general competitive Pokemon knowledge" can only take you so far in a transition to just about any metagame, it's inherently easier to apply your existing knowledge of competitive Pokemon to forum discussion, teambuilding, or battling situations the more similar the metagame at hand is to the metagame(s) you are already knowledgeable about.
Transferring general competitive Pokemon knowledge across different formats -- How does it affect the current and future CAP process?
Let's say that I want to get back in touch with a format that I haven't played in a while, or perhaps start playing a completely new one. If I pick a format that falls under the category of 6v6 singles, let's say ORAS NU, I'm going to have a much easier time and learn more quickly than if I decided to try something like VGC 16 for the first time. I can grab a sample team or two from the NU forums, look over the viability rankings to figure out the top threats, and dive right in and (probably) do reasonably well. I'd be able to teach myself things along the way like how to patch up weak spots in my team and increase its overall effectiveness. Of course, I'm still not going to be some sort of NU genius or anything; if I really wanted to step up my NU game, I'd likely end up consulting more experienced NU players that have a much deeper knowledge of the metagame than I do so that I may further my own knowledge. But the way I see it, that's a good thing in the end, as it encourages interaction, and I feel like this is directly applicable to how CAP should work in terms of Doug's proposal.
If we're in the process of designing a CAP that the community feels is really shaping up to be a perfect fit for NU, that's where the expertise of experienced, high-level NU players will come into play. Not everyone in the CAP community is highly knowledgeable about NU (and we can certainly say the same about OU in past CAPs), but that's exactly the beauty of Doug's proposal-- we're not expecting everyone to be an expert in NU! Or whatever metagame(s) the CAP ends up being centered around for that matter. We'll expect our posters to have good "general competitive Pokemon knowledge," but nothing more. As a project progresses and the ideal metagame(s) for the CAP begin to come into focus, the people of those respective metagame(s) will inevitably hear that we're making a Pokemon that's likely going to see use in their metagame. "Hey, those guys at CAP are designing a Pokemon that we can use in NU! Let's go post in the thread!" I'm certain that there'll be people that are excited to come and contribute their knowledge to the discussion at hand, with hopes that they'll get to use to use the final creation in a metagame they already know and love. Even though there will be plenty of participants that aren't top-level players in the metagame(s) at hand, the broader CAP community will still be able to chip in and contribute to the discussion with their working general knowledge of competitive Pokemon, and will still be able to enjoy the process and the end result.
But what if we get sidetracked or "screw up" somewhere along the way? Let's take the NU example again. We're halfway through designing the CAP and the community seems to be mostly in agreement that it should be a potent and viable threat in NU. If we hit a bump along the way and give it an ability or stats (or something) that skews its power level in a way that renders it too powerful or too underpowered for the NU metagame, it's not a problem! In the past, if we're in the process of making a CAP and we ended up choosing something that made the CAP too powerful or underpowered for the OU metagame somewhere along the way, we were stuck with it. Some people would lose hope and stop posting. "Oh well, we screwed up again. Better luck next CAP." This attitude would reduce involvement and hype would die down, as well as decreasing the overall morale of the greater CAP community. Most notably, this increased toxicity as users started to point fingers at each other about who screwed up. Meanwhile, the remaining participants would struggle trying to salvage the CAP.
Doug's proposal addresses this issue quite elegantly, as we're no longer targeting a specific metagame. If we decided somewhere along the way that we want the CAP to be this awesome NU Pokemon, but then we screw it up somehow, that's fine! We simply regroup and press onward. The CAP community has already proven on several occasions that it's capable of adapting to change (reminder: we just made a Mega CAP), and we'd use this opportunity to draw in knowledge from knowledgeable PU or RU players, allowing them to step up to the plate and offer their wisdom, and we can continue where we left off without the hard feelings we've experienced in the past. And it could very well happen that the CAP community isn't in total agreement as to where a CAP fits best after the creation process is finished. Perhaps the community is split on whether it's more of a RU or a NU Pokemon. That's not a problem either! The CAP can be playtested in both metagames, or as many other metagames as we see fit.
TL;DR - It's inherently easier for an experienced 6v6 singles player to learn about, play, and apply competitive battling strategies and knowledge towards another metagame if said metagame is also in a 6v6 singles format. It's also easier for the CAP userbase, as well as the CAP itself, to adapt to change and unforeseen "mistakes" along the way if our concept and building focus fits within a certain general category of formats, as opposed to it being a complete free-for-all.
Depth of Competitive Pokemon Knowledge and CAP Leadership
So, where am I going with all this? Well, I can't stress this next part enough: Our leadership, especially the TL and TLT members, will be of the utmost importance in an upcoming CAP Project following Doug's proposal, or any new proposal we come up with for that matter. We'll be forging new and uncharted territory for CAP in many ways, and it is their job to keep discussion on track and focused. In my opinion, the TL and TLT members should absolutely have a good general knowledge of competitive Pokemon, as well as the ability to effectively lead discussion and pose thought-provoking questions for us to answer. However, it's not reasonable to require our leaders to have an in-depth working knowledge of all the numerous, intricate strategies and nuances across formats with little relation to each other, be it 6v6 Doubles, Triples, 1v1, or whatever other format category you could possibly come up with that's currently supported on Pokemon Showdown. Now don't get me wrong; I do realize that there are universal competitive strategies and bits of knowledge that can be applied to all formats regardless of what metagame we're looking at, but there are countless intricacies across each format that just can't be ignored, especially when we're considering being all-inclusive in building a generically good Pokemon.
If we have a CAP participant that is a relatively experienced competitive battler and is well-versed in the general strategies of 6v6 singles (let's say their main tier is ORAS OU), they'd still be able to apply and contribute a good deal of their knowledge towards building a generically good 6v6 singles Pokemon, regardless of which format was being focused on. If the CAP's attributes and discussion start pointing towards it being more of a UU sort of mon? It wouldn't be a problem, even if said OU player has never so much as touched UU before. Assuming they're competent enough at conveying their general knowledge in discussion, they'd still be able to offer valuable insight and feel like a useful contributor. If discussion was initially focused on OU, but suddenly became consumed by players talking about how said CAP will perform and function in, let's say Smogon Triples, it suddenly becomes harder for some participants to contribute to those aspects of the CAP, and more importantly, it will hamper the TL/TLT's effectiveness in leading and driving the discussion if they themselves are not well-versed in that sort of competitive environment. Even worse, it could lead to a bunch of separate discussions happening simultaneously that have little relevance to each other, leading to chaos in the discussion threads and a "tug-of-war" effect that was explained earlier.
Broadening our scope (but not excessively so)
I'll just go ahead and quote jas directly, since he made a really important point (and summed up what I'm trying to say quite nicely).
Considering that this has also been somewhat of a problem area in past CAPs, I'd also like to talk about Doug's proposal regarding future CAP concepts and how we can move forward. Deck Knight already addressed this topic quite thoroughly, and I'd like to take the opportunity to add onto that a bit. As far as CAP concepts go, if we do agree to narrow the scope of which types of formats we're building for only slightly, as outlined earlier, this actually gives us much greater freedom to create more developed, descriptive roles for future CAP concepts than if we try to develop a CAP concept that's general enough to work in virtually any format.
To take an extreme example, let's consider a concept entitled "Ultimate Pivot." This is certainly a workable concept in 6v6 singles (as well as some other formats outside this mold), but this role doesn't exist, for example, in the 1v1 metagame. Because you're using only one Pokemon per battle, there is no actual switching or pivoting to be done. Now, this isn't to say we couldn't still try to make it viable in 1v1, but the concept isn't "all-inclusive," so in a theoretical 1v1 discussion, we'd be just sort of giving it traits to succeed in the metagame without regards for the original concept. Therefore, it wouldn't quite be considered an ideal concept under the unmodified version of Doug's proposal.
Again, the 1v1 example may be a bit extreme, but my point is this: There are countless more nuanced strategies and roles in competitive Pokemon that are exceedingly prominent in one group of formats, but are completely unseen in another. Therefore, by narrowing the scope of the types of formats we're building for, we allow the CAP community the freedom to be more descriptive and creative when designing and submitting CAP concepts, as they can be assured that their concept will be relevant to a certain type of format. In my opinion, this is a good thing! Now, I do realize, that overly-specific concepts do tend to limit discussion, as the answers end up being "too obvious," which stifles creativity as a result. Despite this, I still have faith that our future TL will recognize this, and will be able to strike a balance, selecting concepts for the slate that aren't overly-specific, but aren't overly-vague either. This will allow us to hit a sweet spot with our discussion threads; discussions pertaining to the concept won't be too boring or obvious, but they won't be too unfocused or chaotic either.
Potential Revisions to Doug's Proposal
Anyway, I've done plenty of commenting on Doug's proposal at this point, so I'll go ahead and quote Doug's "TL;DR" proposal with a TL;DR version of my thoughts edited in for potential discussion. My suggestions are in bold.
---
There are just a couple more things I'd like to talk about in my post. Bear with me!
State of the CAP Metagame, the CAP Metagame community, and its future
As most of you already know, I'm a huge enthusiast of the CAP metagame and am a lover of the growing community. The CAP metagame community certainly isn't the largest one around, but it has come a long way in this past year or so. If you frequent the CAP metagame forum, or even just peek in every once in a while, you'll see that there have been numerous forum projects, competitions, and tournaments hosted there, proving that the community has willing and dedicated contributors, and a legitimate place in the greater CAP community. There have been many helpful and dedicated users within the forum, and the combined efforts of numerous users have led to the completion of well over 30 CAP metagame analyses to date. This includes CAP Pokemon and non-CAP Pokemon alike, which I think is awesome. The non-CAP Pokemon analyses are especially cool in my opinion, as many newer players assume Pokemon from OU tend to run the same sets in CAP. While this is certainly true to an extent, their CAP analyses outline their differences and their performance in the actual CAP metagame. One of the examples I always like to bring up is Hidden Power Ground Keldeo. OU Keldeo really has no business running Hidden Power Ground, but it's widely considered the standard in the CAP metagame, as it allows Keldeo to hit Mollux and Plasmanta for massive damage. Anyway, the creation of CAP metagame analyses hasn't been the easiest or quickest process ever due to the lower number of participants in the community, but it's definitely been a worthwhile endeavor.
Expanding on the evolution and progress of the CAP metagame forum in its entirety, the community has formed a solid base of extremely dedicated and hard-working participants that have pushed the forum forward in impressive ways ever since its inception. cbrevan is an example; he's been nothing short of a powerhouse in the CAP metagame forum, QCing basically every CAP analysis that gets put onsite nowadays, writing plenty of analyses himself, and hosting important threads such as the CAP Viability Rankings. Now, he and I are both acting as the coordinators for Crucibelle's Playtest Analysis. I could honestly go on and list several more valued contributors in the community if I wanted to, but that's not really my goal here. My point is that the CAP metagame community has advanced and grown significantly in the past year or so on both the Smogon Forums and PS!, and many of the people in this community happen to be frequent participants and even respected leaders in the main CAP Process. In other words, this community absolutely deserves a say in the future of the metagame they've grown to love and worked so hard to develop!
But how does this all relate to the proposal at hand? ...am I just rambling at this point? Well for starters, one of the aspects of Doug's Proposal that I very much enjoy is that it intentionally makes no assumptions regarding the future of the CAP metagame. In fact, if we were to move forward with Doug's proposal (or a similar variation thereof), it has no direct impact on the CAP metagame. The current iteration of the CAP metagame is structured using the simple philosophy "OU+CAP," meaning that its banlist is based directly off of OU. That's pretty much the way it's been since the start. If a Pokemon gets the boot from OU, boom, it's gone from CAP too. It's true that CAP players have always been able to adapt to these shifts, and it's never really caused any huge issues as far as I'm aware of. However, a shift in direction for CAP with the nature of Doug's proposal suddenly renders the CAP metagame's tie to OU completely obsolete. As a result, this tie to OU would become completed unneeded in my opinion, and I'm definitely not alone in this thinking.
As the Change in Direction thread has progressed, there has been nothing short of a ton of speculation, excitement, and even nervousness within the CAP metagame community regarding not only the possibility of breaking free from OU, but also the future of the CAP metagame thereafter. Many of you were likely aware of this already, but I still feel that it's important that this is perfectly clear to the entirety of PRC. Some users are more vocal with their opinions than others, but I know for a fact that there are several notable users that have very strong opinions regarding the future of the CAP metagame, including myself, and not all of us are in agreement (which is completely understandable). However, I won't elaborate on my specific opinions here to avoid going too far off-topic. After all, the primary focus still needs to be the future of CAP as a whole, and nothing is set in stone yet. Therefore, I'd prefer that we start a separate PRC topic to address these issues, but at a later date (specifically, after the greater CAP community is sold on a plan of how to best move forward with CAP). If the CAP metagame ends up being directly addressed again here in this thread, or within another proposal, I'll certainly elaborate and pitch in more of my thoughts on the topic. If it doesn't, I propose that we postpone the addressing of the CAP Metagame's future and save the specifics for another PRC thread, where it can be discussed in detail.
Crucibelle Playtest
One last thing. On an entirely separate note, I'm overjoyed that the CAP ladder was able to be kept up alongside the Crucibelle Playtest ladder. This was one of my gripes with CAP Playtests in the past. But as we can see, having both ladders active this time around led to more CAP battles overall as Deck Knight showed us earlier, which is awesome both in terms of publicity and expanding our playerbase. The only real downside that I can think of was that this caused some confusion to newcomers (as we anticipated) e.g. "Why is Crucibelle banned in CAP?" or "Why can't I use Cyclohm in the playtest?" However, this wasn't really much of an issue, as it's easy to explain, and I don't think any of the PS! room auth had any problems clarifying this for newcomers. Ultimately, the overall benefits of keeping both ladders up at the same time during a CAP playtest easily outweigh this minor drawback, and I think we should continue to do so in future CAP playtests.
I've already had the opportunity to chat with many of you on both PS! and IRC regarding Doug's proposal, and now I'd like to make an official post here with my opinions on the matter, as well as my thoughts on a few other related topics.
First off, I'd like to say that there are several aspects about Doug's proposal that I really enjoy, and I agree with a lot with the general sentiment of his post regarding the social aspect of CAP and "reestablishing a working middle class." So, rather than restate everything Doug said that I'm in agreement with, I'd like to elaborate further on the benefits of this proposal, as well as touch on some of the specifics that I foresee as potential issues and hopefully provide ideas as to how they may be fixed or avoided.
Scope of this proposal -- Is it too wide?
jas61292 touched on one of my biggest concerns with the proposal quite nicely, which is the scope of designing a CAP for potential use in multiple metagames. Don't get me wrong; I definitely feel that the increased potential for participation and contribution from competitive players of varying backgrounds would be simply amazing for CAP. We end up with a project that is easier to participate in, offers more opportunities for players to contribute their metagame knowledge, and in my opinion, we end up with a more fun project as a result! However, I do feel that the proposal in its current state risks being too broad in this sense for many of the reasons jas has already outlined. I'll attempt to elaborate on this issue further.
Competitive Pokemon Knowledge on Varying Scales
To start, I'll analyze myself as a competitive Pokemon player, purely for the sake of example. I've been on Smogon for almost three years now and have played on Pokemon Showdown for even longer than that, and I'd consider myself to have a adequate working knowledge of general competitive Pokemon. If we get more specific than general competitive Pokemon knowledge, I consider myself, first and foremost, a 6v6 singles player. As a result, I'm most comfortable playing and learning metagames that fall under this classification. As far as specific metagames I've battled in and learned, I'd consider myself most knowledgeable and experienced with Little Cup and the CAP metagame. I still ladder in several other formats to a good extent, including various doubles formats. In fact, I've obtained voting reqs in Doubles OU before, but despite this, I still wouldn't consider myself all that familiar or well-versed with the more intricate strategies unique to the various doubles formats, or any other category of formats outside of 6v6 singles for that matter. I'm usually at a loss when it comes to teambuilding for these formats due to the presence of various strategies that are unique to these formats, thus being absent from 6v6 singles. While it's true that "general competitive Pokemon knowledge" can only take you so far in a transition to just about any metagame, it's inherently easier to apply your existing knowledge of competitive Pokemon to forum discussion, teambuilding, or battling situations the more similar the metagame at hand is to the metagame(s) you are already knowledgeable about.
Transferring general competitive Pokemon knowledge across different formats -- How does it affect the current and future CAP process?
Let's say that I want to get back in touch with a format that I haven't played in a while, or perhaps start playing a completely new one. If I pick a format that falls under the category of 6v6 singles, let's say ORAS NU, I'm going to have a much easier time and learn more quickly than if I decided to try something like VGC 16 for the first time. I can grab a sample team or two from the NU forums, look over the viability rankings to figure out the top threats, and dive right in and (probably) do reasonably well. I'd be able to teach myself things along the way like how to patch up weak spots in my team and increase its overall effectiveness. Of course, I'm still not going to be some sort of NU genius or anything; if I really wanted to step up my NU game, I'd likely end up consulting more experienced NU players that have a much deeper knowledge of the metagame than I do so that I may further my own knowledge. But the way I see it, that's a good thing in the end, as it encourages interaction, and I feel like this is directly applicable to how CAP should work in terms of Doug's proposal.
If we're in the process of designing a CAP that the community feels is really shaping up to be a perfect fit for NU, that's where the expertise of experienced, high-level NU players will come into play. Not everyone in the CAP community is highly knowledgeable about NU (and we can certainly say the same about OU in past CAPs), but that's exactly the beauty of Doug's proposal-- we're not expecting everyone to be an expert in NU! Or whatever metagame(s) the CAP ends up being centered around for that matter. We'll expect our posters to have good "general competitive Pokemon knowledge," but nothing more. As a project progresses and the ideal metagame(s) for the CAP begin to come into focus, the people of those respective metagame(s) will inevitably hear that we're making a Pokemon that's likely going to see use in their metagame. "Hey, those guys at CAP are designing a Pokemon that we can use in NU! Let's go post in the thread!" I'm certain that there'll be people that are excited to come and contribute their knowledge to the discussion at hand, with hopes that they'll get to use to use the final creation in a metagame they already know and love. Even though there will be plenty of participants that aren't top-level players in the metagame(s) at hand, the broader CAP community will still be able to chip in and contribute to the discussion with their working general knowledge of competitive Pokemon, and will still be able to enjoy the process and the end result.
But what if we get sidetracked or "screw up" somewhere along the way? Let's take the NU example again. We're halfway through designing the CAP and the community seems to be mostly in agreement that it should be a potent and viable threat in NU. If we hit a bump along the way and give it an ability or stats (or something) that skews its power level in a way that renders it too powerful or too underpowered for the NU metagame, it's not a problem! In the past, if we're in the process of making a CAP and we ended up choosing something that made the CAP too powerful or underpowered for the OU metagame somewhere along the way, we were stuck with it. Some people would lose hope and stop posting. "Oh well, we screwed up again. Better luck next CAP." This attitude would reduce involvement and hype would die down, as well as decreasing the overall morale of the greater CAP community. Most notably, this increased toxicity as users started to point fingers at each other about who screwed up. Meanwhile, the remaining participants would struggle trying to salvage the CAP.
Doug's proposal addresses this issue quite elegantly, as we're no longer targeting a specific metagame. If we decided somewhere along the way that we want the CAP to be this awesome NU Pokemon, but then we screw it up somehow, that's fine! We simply regroup and press onward. The CAP community has already proven on several occasions that it's capable of adapting to change (reminder: we just made a Mega CAP), and we'd use this opportunity to draw in knowledge from knowledgeable PU or RU players, allowing them to step up to the plate and offer their wisdom, and we can continue where we left off without the hard feelings we've experienced in the past. And it could very well happen that the CAP community isn't in total agreement as to where a CAP fits best after the creation process is finished. Perhaps the community is split on whether it's more of a RU or a NU Pokemon. That's not a problem either! The CAP can be playtested in both metagames, or as many other metagames as we see fit.
TL;DR - It's inherently easier for an experienced 6v6 singles player to learn about, play, and apply competitive battling strategies and knowledge towards another metagame if said metagame is also in a 6v6 singles format. It's also easier for the CAP userbase, as well as the CAP itself, to adapt to change and unforeseen "mistakes" along the way if our concept and building focus fits within a certain general category of formats, as opposed to it being a complete free-for-all.
Depth of Competitive Pokemon Knowledge and CAP Leadership
So, where am I going with all this? Well, I can't stress this next part enough: Our leadership, especially the TL and TLT members, will be of the utmost importance in an upcoming CAP Project following Doug's proposal, or any new proposal we come up with for that matter. We'll be forging new and uncharted territory for CAP in many ways, and it is their job to keep discussion on track and focused. In my opinion, the TL and TLT members should absolutely have a good general knowledge of competitive Pokemon, as well as the ability to effectively lead discussion and pose thought-provoking questions for us to answer. However, it's not reasonable to require our leaders to have an in-depth working knowledge of all the numerous, intricate strategies and nuances across formats with little relation to each other, be it 6v6 Doubles, Triples, 1v1, or whatever other format category you could possibly come up with that's currently supported on Pokemon Showdown. Now don't get me wrong; I do realize that there are universal competitive strategies and bits of knowledge that can be applied to all formats regardless of what metagame we're looking at, but there are countless intricacies across each format that just can't be ignored, especially when we're considering being all-inclusive in building a generically good Pokemon.
If we have a CAP participant that is a relatively experienced competitive battler and is well-versed in the general strategies of 6v6 singles (let's say their main tier is ORAS OU), they'd still be able to apply and contribute a good deal of their knowledge towards building a generically good 6v6 singles Pokemon, regardless of which format was being focused on. If the CAP's attributes and discussion start pointing towards it being more of a UU sort of mon? It wouldn't be a problem, even if said OU player has never so much as touched UU before. Assuming they're competent enough at conveying their general knowledge in discussion, they'd still be able to offer valuable insight and feel like a useful contributor. If discussion was initially focused on OU, but suddenly became consumed by players talking about how said CAP will perform and function in, let's say Smogon Triples, it suddenly becomes harder for some participants to contribute to those aspects of the CAP, and more importantly, it will hamper the TL/TLT's effectiveness in leading and driving the discussion if they themselves are not well-versed in that sort of competitive environment. Even worse, it could lead to a bunch of separate discussions happening simultaneously that have little relevance to each other, leading to chaos in the discussion threads and a "tug-of-war" effect that was explained earlier.
Broadening our scope (but not excessively so)
I'll just go ahead and quote jas directly, since he made a really important point (and summed up what I'm trying to say quite nicely).
I am in absolute agreement with this statement. As such, I'd think it'd be optimal for us to narrow the scope of the original proposal down to a more defined and closely-related group of formats, such as 6v6 singles. Even with this narrowing, CAP would still encompass a broad range of metagames, much broader than ever before, and I can still forsee this proposal doing some amazing things for CAP:jas61292 said: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.
- Promoting Inclusivity - We already have an incredibly diverse range of participants in the CAP community from many different backgrounds, not just OU. This is a fact. This proposal uses this to CAP's advantage, as we can draw from the deeper metagame knowledge of various participants to help us along the way without stifling participation and the overall enjoyment of the greater CAP community in the process as it has in the past.
- Growing our Community - This plays off my first point, but naturally if we're building a mon that's shaping up to be a potent threat in X metagame, this will naturally spark an interest for people from that respective community. And once the Pokemon creation process and playtest(s) have been completed, who knows? The newer participants may decide "Wow, CAP is pretty fun!" and stick around for another project!
- Decreasing Toxicity within the Community - This is HUGE. We all seem to be in agreement that something desperately needs to change-- that's why we're having this discussion! If we continue to focus on OU (or any specific metagame for that matter, even the CAP metagame), we're inevitably going to continue making the same mistakes, some of which are simply out of our control due to the nature of CAP itself. We'll run into the exact same issues with struggling to balance and tailor future CAPs for a specific metagame. And, we'll continue to receive the same old criticism we always get from outside the community, not to mention the general negativity from within the CAP community itself. By broadening our focus, we allow ourselves to draw from a much, much wider range of general competitive pokemon knowledge, allowing for more people to feel comfortable contributing to and participating in competitive discussions, and allowing for a wider range of potential leaders to step up and contribute their deeper metagame knowledge to our discussions. In other words, we're increasing both discussion quantity and quality-- and I'm pretty sure we'd all enjoy that!
Considering that this has also been somewhat of a problem area in past CAPs, I'd also like to talk about Doug's proposal regarding future CAP concepts and how we can move forward. Deck Knight already addressed this topic quite thoroughly, and I'd like to take the opportunity to add onto that a bit. As far as CAP concepts go, if we do agree to narrow the scope of which types of formats we're building for only slightly, as outlined earlier, this actually gives us much greater freedom to create more developed, descriptive roles for future CAP concepts than if we try to develop a CAP concept that's general enough to work in virtually any format.
To take an extreme example, let's consider a concept entitled "Ultimate Pivot." This is certainly a workable concept in 6v6 singles (as well as some other formats outside this mold), but this role doesn't exist, for example, in the 1v1 metagame. Because you're using only one Pokemon per battle, there is no actual switching or pivoting to be done. Now, this isn't to say we couldn't still try to make it viable in 1v1, but the concept isn't "all-inclusive," so in a theoretical 1v1 discussion, we'd be just sort of giving it traits to succeed in the metagame without regards for the original concept. Therefore, it wouldn't quite be considered an ideal concept under the unmodified version of Doug's proposal.
Again, the 1v1 example may be a bit extreme, but my point is this: There are countless more nuanced strategies and roles in competitive Pokemon that are exceedingly prominent in one group of formats, but are completely unseen in another. Therefore, by narrowing the scope of the types of formats we're building for, we allow the CAP community the freedom to be more descriptive and creative when designing and submitting CAP concepts, as they can be assured that their concept will be relevant to a certain type of format. In my opinion, this is a good thing! Now, I do realize, that overly-specific concepts do tend to limit discussion, as the answers end up being "too obvious," which stifles creativity as a result. Despite this, I still have faith that our future TL will recognize this, and will be able to strike a balance, selecting concepts for the slate that aren't overly-specific, but aren't overly-vague either. This will allow us to hit a sweet spot with our discussion threads; discussions pertaining to the concept won't be too boring or obvious, but they won't be too unfocused or chaotic either.
Potential Revisions to Doug's Proposal
Anyway, I've done plenty of commenting on Doug's proposal at this point, so I'll go ahead and quote Doug's "TL;DR" proposal with a TL;DR version of my thoughts edited in for potential discussion. My suggestions are in bold.
All in all, I feel that Doug's proposal has the potential to be a very solid one for us and our future as a community. If we can get some of the more specific details ironed out and come to a general consensus among PRC, I think we'll be in an excellent spot!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. Instead of "generally useful in competitive Pokemon battles", we could narrow this down to a more specific type of format (perhaps 6v6 singles) for the various reasons outlined by myself and others.
- The "Concept" for a given CAP project will be one of those general "competitive archetypes". With the alteration to the above bullet point, users have the freedom to be more descriptive and creative with CAP concept submissions. Intricate roles and team archetypes that are unique to a specific set of metagames (again, perhaps 6v6 singles) may be freely explored.
- 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.
---
There are just a couple more things I'd like to talk about in my post. Bear with me!
State of the CAP Metagame, the CAP Metagame community, and its future
As most of you already know, I'm a huge enthusiast of the CAP metagame and am a lover of the growing community. The CAP metagame community certainly isn't the largest one around, but it has come a long way in this past year or so. If you frequent the CAP metagame forum, or even just peek in every once in a while, you'll see that there have been numerous forum projects, competitions, and tournaments hosted there, proving that the community has willing and dedicated contributors, and a legitimate place in the greater CAP community. There have been many helpful and dedicated users within the forum, and the combined efforts of numerous users have led to the completion of well over 30 CAP metagame analyses to date. This includes CAP Pokemon and non-CAP Pokemon alike, which I think is awesome. The non-CAP Pokemon analyses are especially cool in my opinion, as many newer players assume Pokemon from OU tend to run the same sets in CAP. While this is certainly true to an extent, their CAP analyses outline their differences and their performance in the actual CAP metagame. One of the examples I always like to bring up is Hidden Power Ground Keldeo. OU Keldeo really has no business running Hidden Power Ground, but it's widely considered the standard in the CAP metagame, as it allows Keldeo to hit Mollux and Plasmanta for massive damage. Anyway, the creation of CAP metagame analyses hasn't been the easiest or quickest process ever due to the lower number of participants in the community, but it's definitely been a worthwhile endeavor.
Expanding on the evolution and progress of the CAP metagame forum in its entirety, the community has formed a solid base of extremely dedicated and hard-working participants that have pushed the forum forward in impressive ways ever since its inception. cbrevan is an example; he's been nothing short of a powerhouse in the CAP metagame forum, QCing basically every CAP analysis that gets put onsite nowadays, writing plenty of analyses himself, and hosting important threads such as the CAP Viability Rankings. Now, he and I are both acting as the coordinators for Crucibelle's Playtest Analysis. I could honestly go on and list several more valued contributors in the community if I wanted to, but that's not really my goal here. My point is that the CAP metagame community has advanced and grown significantly in the past year or so on both the Smogon Forums and PS!, and many of the people in this community happen to be frequent participants and even respected leaders in the main CAP Process. In other words, this community absolutely deserves a say in the future of the metagame they've grown to love and worked so hard to develop!
But how does this all relate to the proposal at hand? ...am I just rambling at this point? Well for starters, one of the aspects of Doug's Proposal that I very much enjoy is that it intentionally makes no assumptions regarding the future of the CAP metagame. In fact, if we were to move forward with Doug's proposal (or a similar variation thereof), it has no direct impact on the CAP metagame. The current iteration of the CAP metagame is structured using the simple philosophy "OU+CAP," meaning that its banlist is based directly off of OU. That's pretty much the way it's been since the start. If a Pokemon gets the boot from OU, boom, it's gone from CAP too. It's true that CAP players have always been able to adapt to these shifts, and it's never really caused any huge issues as far as I'm aware of. However, a shift in direction for CAP with the nature of Doug's proposal suddenly renders the CAP metagame's tie to OU completely obsolete. As a result, this tie to OU would become completed unneeded in my opinion, and I'm definitely not alone in this thinking.
As the Change in Direction thread has progressed, there has been nothing short of a ton of speculation, excitement, and even nervousness within the CAP metagame community regarding not only the possibility of breaking free from OU, but also the future of the CAP metagame thereafter. Many of you were likely aware of this already, but I still feel that it's important that this is perfectly clear to the entirety of PRC. Some users are more vocal with their opinions than others, but I know for a fact that there are several notable users that have very strong opinions regarding the future of the CAP metagame, including myself, and not all of us are in agreement (which is completely understandable). However, I won't elaborate on my specific opinions here to avoid going too far off-topic. After all, the primary focus still needs to be the future of CAP as a whole, and nothing is set in stone yet. Therefore, I'd prefer that we start a separate PRC topic to address these issues, but at a later date (specifically, after the greater CAP community is sold on a plan of how to best move forward with CAP). If the CAP metagame ends up being directly addressed again here in this thread, or within another proposal, I'll certainly elaborate and pitch in more of my thoughts on the topic. If it doesn't, I propose that we postpone the addressing of the CAP Metagame's future and save the specifics for another PRC thread, where it can be discussed in detail.
Crucibelle Playtest
One last thing. On an entirely separate note, I'm overjoyed that the CAP ladder was able to be kept up alongside the Crucibelle Playtest ladder. This was one of my gripes with CAP Playtests in the past. But as we can see, having both ladders active this time around led to more CAP battles overall as Deck Knight showed us earlier, which is awesome both in terms of publicity and expanding our playerbase. The only real downside that I can think of was that this caused some confusion to newcomers (as we anticipated) e.g. "Why is Crucibelle banned in CAP?" or "Why can't I use Cyclohm in the playtest?" However, this wasn't really much of an issue, as it's easy to explain, and I don't think any of the PS! room auth had any problems clarifying this for newcomers. Ultimately, the overall benefits of keeping both ladders up at the same time during a CAP playtest easily outweigh this minor drawback, and I think we should continue to do so in future CAP playtests.
Last edited by a moderator: