I can see both sides of this argument, and there is definitely not a clear "correct decision" here.
I agree that there are many unknowns to a Mega CAP project in terms of policy and process. To just rush into a Mega CAP will likely cause a lot of problems. It may be a total clusterfuck and invite more negative criticism than it generates positive attention and attracts new participants.
On the other hand, it's not like we are really rushing into anything, even if we do a Mega CAP right now. There have been multiple PR threads, and even more offline discussions on IRC and elsewhere, on the topic of Megaevolution and the CAP project. No, we have not discussed much the exact process of a Mega CAP. But we have talked a lot about the reasons for and against doing a Mega CAP and, if we do a Mega CAP, whether we should evolve an existing CAP pokemon, an existing Pokemon species, or make it part of a completely new CAP creation. In my mind, the latter are the really hard questions that need forethought and consideration, and are better informed with more foundation and history. Meaning, it would be hard to make a good decision early in the 6th Gen, when we knew little about Megas and had little history and experience with them in the competitive metagame. But we know a ton about Megas now, and we've talked to death about Megas in CAP.
If we are going to do a Mega CAP, I think we should just get on with it. I think we should just declare that the next CAP will be a Mega CAP, choose a Concept like normal, and then proceed to make our CAP pokemon. I don't think we need to make this harder than it needs to be. I think we should make the process map as closely as possible to the existing CAP process. And I think we can justify that approach competitively too. Let me explain...
Mega Evos range across a broad spectrum of "change to the base species". On the upper end of the change spectrum, you have Megas like MegaBeedrill and MegaPidgeot. Their base forms are total dogshit. Their MegaEvos are pretty badass (I'm not here to argue how good they are or not in OU. But their megas are a fuckton different than their base forms.) Then on the other end of the change spectrum, you have stuff like MegaScizor. Lots of people agree that while MegaScizor is certainly good, it still plays a lot like base Scizor (Once again, not arguing about total effectiveness in OU, just saying the delta is much less than the previous examples).
I think a Mega CAP should target somewhere in between these extremes on the "change spectrum", when it comes to the differences between the base form and the Mega Evo. If we try to make something with a big "mega delta" (like Beedrill), we probably need to have a lot of extra steps to the CAP process, because we are making effectively two very different pokemon. If we seek to make a MegaCAP with a small "mega delta", we probably ruin a lot of the excitement, novelty, and learning of making a Mega Evolution in the first place. So I think CAP should seek to make a Mega Evo with a significant-but-not-huge "mega delta".
How do we define "significant-but-not-huge mega delta"? We don't. We leave that to the interesting rollercoaster of CAP discussion threads. We use something like MegaBeedrill (there are many others) as an example of "too much mega delta", and something like MegaScizor (there are many more like this as well) as "too little mega delta" -- and then leave it to the so-called intelligent community consensus to figure out what makes sense in between those two examples.
It's not too important to define the middle ground. What matters is to overtly eliminate the proposals for extreme mega delta (which may be a lot of fun, but will probably attract more fantastical fanboyism than we really want to deal with), but also stifle the wet blanket conservatives that push for a mega with nothing more than 100 extra BST along the same stat bias as the base form (which will hopefully encourage people to push the ability, typing, and stat boundaries a bit, without fear of being labeled a fanboy noob).
If we don't try to get too extreme with the amount of change, then we can simply piggyback the MegaEvolution characteristics with the regular CAP steps to which they apply. More on this in a minute, but first, let me cover the impact to Concept, which has been debated a lot in past discussions of Mega CAP's.
If we aren't making effectively two different pokemon (a la MegaBeedrill, etc), then we don't need to get too fancy with defining a special Concept tailored for a Mega Evolution. Any CAP concept will do. Looking back at past CAP concepts, any one of those could have been done as a Mega Evolution. Because, at the end of the day, a Mega is nothing more than 100 extra BST (excluding HP), and POTENTIALLY a different ability, and POTENTIALLY different secondary typing. That's it. Admittedly, those three things can produce a wide range of "change spectrum", but not necessarily.
Yes, a Mega CAP COULD be a unique platform to accomodate some amazingly interesting Concepts that would be virtually impossible to do with a regular CAP. But I think that is simply too ambitious for a big project like CAP. Create-A-Pokemon is about the "art of the possible". Don't know that phrase? Look it up. We need to focus on what we can actually get done here. And making fancy nuanced Concepts has never been our thing. CAP cuts with a broadsword, not a scalpel. Even with our new Concept Workshop (which has been a very good thing), special tailor-made Mega Concepts are just wishful thinking, in my humble opinion.
So, assuming we can pick a Concept like normal, the relatively minor modifications to other steps for a Mega CAP would look something like this.
Concept Assessment
This is the big "decision" step when it comes to a Mega really. Because this is where we get an idea of how good the pokemon will be pre and post evolution. Will the base form be relatively weak or different in terms of what they bait before mega evolution? Or will the base form be viable on its own? How the base form and mega form interplay is VERY concept-dependent (meaning different Concepts will have a different "right answer" here) , so we won't even try to put any rules on this ahead of time. Other than the general instruction that we are NOT intentionally trying to make two completely different competitive mons (a la MegaBeedrill, or whatever better archetype the rest of you want to throw out for us to use for reference purposes). Beyond that, let the TL wrangle the discussion and somehow chart a general direction for the project. Business as usual, right?
Typing
We already slate and vote on Typing as a "package deal", so we simply continue that tradition with a Mega CAP. We don't add a separate step to explicitly decide whether we want the Mega to have a different typing or anything like that. We have a single discussion thread for typing, and we consider the base form typing and the mega typing as a single "package". The base form typing and the mega typing should be proposed and discussed together, along with the interplay of the typing potentially changing upon megaevolution and the risk/rewards of the typing changing or not. Meaning, typing proposal posts might look something like:
"I think CAP 21 should be mono-Normal, just like Kangaskhan and MegaKang. <Insert great reasoning here>"
"I want this pokemon to be Poison/Fairy, all the way, both the base and mega forms. <Insert great reasoning here>"
"I want the base form to be Electric/Ground and the mega to be Electric/Fighting. <Insert great reasoning here>"
If those all made the slate, the slate would be:
Normal
Poison/Fairy
Electric/Ground -> Electric/Fighting
I'm sure CAP will probably have a bias towards unique typings and cool typing combinations, but that's certainly nothing new here. We might institute a restriction that only one type may change on the mega evo, if that is, in fact, a rule observed in the actual game. I think it is, but I haven't checked specifically.
Abilities
On a Mega CAP, I think we should consider the Primary Ability as a potential "dual package", kinda like Typing. Since Mega Evolutions have a single ability, and that ability may be different than the ability of the base form, we should vote on Primary Ability with the potential for a pair. Of course, we may have only one Primary Ability for both the base form and the Mega. That's fine. But we allow discussion proposals for two Primary Abilities as a package, with the first being the base form Primary Ability and the second being the Mega's Ability. We can use the same arrow notation ("->") I suggested above for Typing combinations to indicate a pair of Primary Abilities in the slate. For example, a Primary Ability might look like:
Intimidate
Klutz -> Magic Guard
Etc.
The first option means the base form Primary Ability and the Mega Ability will be Intimidate. The second option means Klutz will be the Primary Ability for the base form and Magic Guard would be the ability for the Mega.
There does not need to be any change to our existing steps for Secondary Ability and Flavor Ability.
Yes, I can envision some messy discussions about Abilities with a mega ability in the mix. But Ability discussions are already messy much of the time, so I really don't see this as an added burden.
Base Stats
Continuing with the same thinking as with the previous steps, Stats will be presented as a packaged pair. Submitters will create two stat lines, one for the base form and one for the Mega evo. The Mega stats need exactly 100 more BST than the base form stats and the HP stat needs to be the same in both stat lines. The stats "package" will be slated and voted as a single voting option. We can use the arrow notation ("->") to indicate the pair. A slate option would look something like this:
80/100/75/75/100/105 -> 80/135/100/80/125/115
This will require more work and damage calcs by submitters, and choosing a slate will be more complicated for the Stats Leader -- but I don't think it's too much for us to handle.
Art
Not surprisingly, art will probably be the step most affected by doing a Mega CAP. But I think we can take a straightforward approach, and not try to get to fancy or nuanced with our process. We can treat it just like all the previous competitive steps and make Art a "package submission" too. Artists will submit two designs for a legal submission -- a design for the base form and a design for the Mega. Yes, this will be more work, but I will be stunned if top artists aren't up to the challenge. I don't see this much different than what spriters have been dealing with forever, in having to make both a front and back sprite for a legal submission.
We will definitely have to amend the art posting rules, since each submitter will be working on two designs, so they will post twice as much art as usual. But, I can work out these details with the other CAP art mods in short order.
Sprites and/or 3D Models
Twice as much work will be required here, and that could be a problem from a scheduling perspective. But these steps have a very low number of participants that do the heavy lifting and submissions, so I think we can work out the process details for these steps with the people that do the work. At a high level, I'll continue to advocate we treat these steps with the same "package deal" mentality as all the other steps.
That's it. I know I wrote a lot for all those steps, but if you look at it overall -- it really is not a very big change from a process standpoint. Yes, several steps have additional discussion and slating complexities. But there are no new steps, and the intent and outcome of every step is thematically the same as always. We'll just produce "more" on several steps with a Mega CAP.
I am not saying this is a perfect proposal for how to do a Mega CAP. But I think it is VERY doable. It allows us to do something legitimately interesting and exciting without getting too fancy, too ambitious, or too extreme. And most importantly, I think we can do this RIGHT NOW.
I am not going to shove this down everyone's throat. This is not a conclusion post to this thread. But I am trying to drive resolution quickly, if possible. I am trying to accomodate Birkal and others' concerns that we really are not prepared for big process changes to do a Mega CAP. That's why I am specifically proposing to NOT do big process changes, and instead limit the scope of a Mega CAP just a bit and put some additional work and complexity on our existing process steps. I am also trying to accomodate nyttyn and others that want to stop putting off Mega CAP to the unspecified future and get on with it, and stop ignoring the biggest competitive characteristic of the entire 6th Generation of Pokemon games.
CAP policy is, and always will be, about tradeoffs. Everyone participating in this thread should understand the need to stretch and compromise. I'm trying to do my part, so please keep that in mind as you consider and comment.
lgi