Policy Review Policy Review - Revisions & The CAP Metagame

[Rising_Dusk]

I think that's too specific, really. For instance, every metagame tends to stagnate when it is balanced. That would lead to a lot of people thinking "Well maybe this CAP is unfair" when it is or any number of other problematic things. I want to see that these characteristics are left intentionally vague, as that way, people can interpret them as needed. Remember, these votes will be reviewed before being accepted.

petrie911 brings up an interesting point. Drastically changing the metagame may not be for the worst. Using his example, If we did make Kingdra of the Sun. Would it necessarily be that ground breaking? Some concepts will obviously change the way we play the metagame.

It is absolutely critical to note the difference between impacting the metagame and which Pokemon are popular and altering the metagame and the way the game is played. I can only emphasize this most-clearly by issuing examples. If we introduced a Pokemon with Drought, then the entire Pokemon OU metagame becomes trying to stop/start sun and beat the starter of it or abuse the sun sweepers. That changes the very fundamental way the OU metagame is played so substantially by significantly changing the common battle strategies used. That would constitute being rejected on the Metagame Characteristic as I have written it.

Another example is an Auto-Rapid Spin Pokemon. Could you imagine what that would do to the metagame, not having any entry hazards at all? That is a significant change in the common battle conditions of the metagame, and thus would constitute a rejection on the Metagame Characteristic as I have written it.

Notice how battle conditions and battle strategies are closely intertwined. You could make a case that they are actually the same thing, and that would be fine. The reason we have them split and said as they are is so that the characteristic is open to more broad interpretation. Regardless, it says exactly what it should, that the CAP should not deform the metagame so that it is unrecognizable. In my humble opinion, no CAP so far has made the metagame unrecognizable, to give you an idea of the line I, myself, would draw.

_________________________________________

Okay, after a long discussion on IRC today, we came to some more conclusions that I think are moving us in the right direction. We discussed the exact criteria for voting and how that process would be handled and we all ended up agreeing on one manner of doing it. I had a few different implementations of this method, though, so I came up with two manners of working it that are both presented below:

Style #1 - Users from past metagame vote for next metagame

• Users would apply via a public application process similar to how the PRC is selected. This must be done before the playtest metagame begins for each round.
  • Users who apply would need to supply their relevant CAP server user name, rating, and deviation. (These will be verified) These values are taken from the CAP round before the playtest metagame begins.
  • Users who apply will need to meet the very loose rating/deviation requirements of 1600/70.
  • Users who do not meet those requirements may apply for special permission to vote, but will have to make a very convincing case that they understand the current CAP metagame enough to vote.
  • Users who apply would have to answer a few questions in the application about the metagame on the whole.
• The playtest metagame begins where the new CAP is played in standard OU. The accepted voters do not have to do anything for this stage, though they are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the new CAP.
• There exists a 2 week period following the playtest metagame where all CAPs are allowed on the ladder. During this period, all accepted voters must again meet the required rating / deviation requirements. If any voter fails to meet those requirements and cannot convince the users in charge that he/she knows the full metagame well-enough, then he/she will be removed from the accepted voters list.
• Users who move on and maintain their presence on the accepted voters list go on to vote on CAP rejections/acceptances.
  • Users would submit 4-8 sentences per CAP they want to see rejected explaining why and citing the relevant rejection characteristics.
  • Users would not have to submit sentences for CAPs that they feel do not need to be rejected.
• These votes are tallied by the users in charge (CAP Server Moderators, CAP Forum Moderators, and specially-chosen members of the community)
• The users in charge reserve the right to deny the individual CAP vote for any specific voter based on the quality of the individual vote. Accepted to-vote users are not guaranteed that their votes will be counted if they shirk on the quality of their vote.
• A CAP is rejected from the upcoming CAP if more than 50% of accepted users vote it to be rejected, regardless of which clauses were cited.
• A rejection list is posted for the next round

Style #2 - Users from only test metagame vote for next metagame

• There exists a 2 week period following the playtest metagame where all CAPs are allowed on the ladder. During this period, all people are encouraged to experiment with the CAPs in any way.
• Users would apply via a public application process similar to how the PRC is selected. This must be done after the "All-CAP" metagame ends for each round.
  • Users who apply would need to supply their relevant CAP server user name, rating, and deviation. (These will be verified)
  • Users who apply will need to meet the very loose rating/deviation requirements of 1600/70.
  • Users who do not meet those requirements may apply for special permission to vote, but will have to make a very convincing case that they understand the current CAP metagame enough to vote.
  • Users who apply would have to answer a few questions in the application about the metagame on the whole.
• Users who move on in the accepted voters list go on to vote on CAP rejections/acceptances.
  • Users would submit 4-8 sentences per CAP they want to see rejected explaining why and citing the relevant rejection characteristics.
  • Users would not have to submit sentences for CAPs that they feel do not need to be rejected.
• These votes are tallied by the users in charge (CAP Server Moderators, CAP Forum Moderators, and specially-chosen members of the community)
• The users in charge reserve the right to deny the individual CAP vote for any specific voter based on the quality of the individual vote. Accepted to-vote users are not guaranteed that their votes will be counted if they shirk on the quality of their vote.
• A CAP is rejected from the upcoming CAP if more than 50% of accepted users vote it to be rejected, regardless of which clauses were cited.
• A rejection list is posted for the next round

The big difference between these two styles is that in the first, users from the past metagame populate the initial voting list, and those who continue to play and meet requirements in the test metagame get to vote. Meanwhile, for the second style, the past metagame is irrelevant and only the test metagame is meaningful. Each has its own pros and cons, and below I will list the ones that stand out to me:

1. Style #1 takes more work and may end up with a smaller voting base, meanwhile style #2 is more accessible and less work
2. Style #2 makes the previous round of the CAP metagame largely irrelevant because only the "All-CAP" metagame matters for purposes of voting, meanwhile style #1 makes it all important

I personally favor Style #1. What does everyone else think of these options?

_________________________________________
​

For consistency, I am quoting the characteristics as we currently have them at the end of this post. They have not changed since my last post.

Overpowered Characteristic
A CAP Pokémon is rejected from the CAP metagame if, in common battle conditions, it is capable of either sweeping through a significant portion of teams in the metagame with little effort, walling and stalling out a significant portion of the metagame, or consistently setting up a situation in which it makes it substantially easier for other Pokemon to sweep.

Underpowered Characteristic
A CAP Pokémon is rejected from the CAP metagame if, in common battle conditions, it is unable to sweep much of the metagame, wall or stall out much of the metagame, or set up a situation with any regularity where other Pokemon can more easily sweep. A CAP cannot be rejected by this characteristic on the first round of the metagame after its creation.

Concept Characteristic
A CAP Pokémon is rejected from the CAP metagame if, in common battle and metagame conditions, it functions in a vastly different manner from the concept given to it by the CAP project that created it.

Metagame Characteristic
A CAP Pokémon is rejected from the CAP metagame if its presence in the metagame causes a set of common battle conditions or encourages a set of common battle strategies that are significantly different from the standard Pokemon metagame.

 

[Elevator Music]

Ok I said I'd make a post on IRC so here are my three main points to chime in on.

1) Not a fan of Style #1.

I don't think we need to put emphasis on the previous CAP metagame. If anything, we should be looking for knowledge of the OU metagame since that is what we base our comparisons of "unrecognizable" off of, and is what we are looking to stay somewhat close to.

However I don't even think that's something we should be looking at. Suspect testing, for instance, doesn't really require that you play OU alongside it. They don't check your OU ladder ranking. It is just generally assumed that you have good interests at heart and knowledge of the metagame you are making decisions about.


2) I still dislike the "underpowered" characteristic.

We don't need this. I think it's definitely uneccessary. Ending up with an unused pokemon is a good enough incentive for a TL, and for the community for that matter, to make a working CAP. It does not need to be banned because it's not good enough. I said before in this topic that just because an unused pokemon still slightly pushes us away from the standard metagame, we should not remove it from the ladder, as in a slight metagame shift or discovery of some gimmick set it has potential to become good.

I think someone mentioned on IRC that the characteristic is mainly there to keep the TL from making a bad CAP. That's not really a good argument, partly because of what I just wrote, but also because if we have doubts that a user would make a bad CAP, we shouldn't pick them as TL.


3) The "metagame" characteristic isn't something that can be tested.

Metagames usually take longer than a week to settle down into their true form. At the beginning of every suspect test, people are busy trying out gimmicks and whoring the new pokemon. CAP releases aren't really that much different, regardless of what metagame you throw them into. You can't really check to see if the metagame is too different than standard "at the end of the week", because there hasn't been enough time for the metagame to settle.

The only time that I can see this being applied really well is a time after playtesting. The weeks before the playtesting of Krilowatt were the best examples to me of how that CAP metagame was really bad (and different from standard though that's not really why it was so bad, it was just an indication).


On a tangent, how is it decided what characteristics of the standard metagame we want to keep (ie: what are the defining characteristics of the standard metagame; what are the things we don't want to touch)? This isn't really a question that can be answered, mostly because it 1) changes slightly over time and 2) is up to the individual. This I think sums up any problems I could have with the characteristic, but don't read too much into that...

 

[Rising_Dusk]

Okay, after a bunch of discussion on IRC and reviewing EM's post, we as a conglomerate seemed to join hands and sing songs of love and happiness at the following:

Style #2 as listed in my above post
​

The biggest argument for this was that it expedited the process and removed additional layers of complication. Furthermore, the allure of having a larger voting base is pretty significant and definitely worth it. It was for this reason that Plus, Fuzznip, Vader, and I (among many others) unanimously voted for Style #2.

Add a clause to the metagame characteristic stating that a Pokemon cannot be rejected by it on the first round of its presence in the metagame
​

This is particularly because it takes time for a metagame to adapt to a new Pokemon. For this reason, new CAPs cannot be rejected on their first round because of the metagame characteristic.

CAP Server & Forum Mods may vote in the acceptance/rejection of CAPs, but they must qualify for voting all the same.
​

Yup, self-explanatory. We wanted to make sure that they were allowed because they oftentimes are the most serious players on the server.

Tennisace will be the reviewing mod for the first round of acceptances/rejections at the end of CAP11's playtest period.
​

We chose him because he isn't significantly vested in the going-ons of the CAP server, but still has sufficient knowledge of the metagame. In this way, he will be as least biased toward the outcome of the votes of all possible candidates, meanwhile he can reasonably decide whether a vote is sufficiently explained or not and reject/approve those votes accordingly.

This all puts our characteristics at...

Overpowered Characteristic
A CAP Pokémon is rejected from the CAP metagame if, in common battle conditions, it is capable of either sweeping through a significant portion of teams in the metagame with little effort, walling and stalling out a significant portion of the metagame, or consistently setting up a situation in which it makes it substantially easier for other Pokemon to sweep.

Underpowered Characteristic
A CAP Pokémon is rejected from the CAP metagame if, in common battle conditions, it is unable to sweep much of the metagame, wall or stall out much of the metagame, or set up a situation with any regularity where other Pokemon can more easily sweep. A CAP Pokémon cannot be rejected by this characteristic on the first round of the metagame after its creation.

Concept Characteristic
A CAP Pokémon is rejected from the CAP metagame if, in common battle and metagame conditions, it functions in a vastly different manner from the concept given to it by the CAP project that created it.

Metagame Characteristic
A CAP Pokémon is rejected from the CAP metagame if its presence in the metagame causes a set of common battle conditions or encourages a set of common battle strategies that are significantly different from the standard Pokemon metagame. A CAP Pokémon cannot be rejected by this characteristic on the first round of the metagame after its creation.

Also, to answer the only point of EM not already addressed...

We don't need this. I think it's definitely uneccessary. Ending up with an unused pokemon is a good enough incentive for a TL, and for the community for that matter, to make a working CAP. It does not need to be banned because it's not good enough. I said before in this topic that just because an unused pokemon still slightly pushes us away from the standard metagame, we should not remove it from the ladder, as in a slight metagame shift or discovery of some gimmick set it has potential to become good.

It is important that the characteristic is present to indicate that such a weak CAP is indeed a failed CAP. Remember that we are not using these characteristics strictly in a tiering sense, we are using them to provide server feedback to the forum crowd that either "this CAP is good, fair, and acceptable" or "this CAP is poorly made, do better next time." Crafting a weak CAP is indeed worthy of it being removed as a poorly made CAP.

Anyway, there's an entire round where such gimmick sets can be found, since a CAP cannot be rejected on the first round due to being weak. This gives players an ample amount of time to find those niche sets that might end up being great.

On a tangent, how is it decided what characteristics of the standard metagame we want to keep (ie: what are the defining characteristics of the standard metagame; what are the things we don't want to touch)?

The defining characteristics and conditions are those that are most commonly seen/used. That's the key. How that is interpreted exactly is up to the individual voter.

 

[Elevator Music]

It is important that the characteristic is present to indicate that such a weak CAP is indeed a failed CAP. Remember that we are not using these characteristics strictly in a tiering sense, we are using them to provide server feedback to the forum crowd that either "this CAP is good, fair, and acceptable" or "this CAP is poorly made, do better next time." Crafting a weak CAP is indeed worthy of it being removed as a poorly made CAP.

Anyway, there's an entire round where such gimmick sets can be found, since a CAP cannot be rejected on the first round due to being weak. This gives players an ample amount of time to find those niche sets that might end up being great.

...And it took Garchomp like 9 months in DP for YacheChomp to gain popularity, while Heatran was pretty much BL. If you are dead set on some sort of "punishment", I would avoid removing the CAP. It seems silly...

 

[Rising_Dusk]

Remember that the acceptance or rejection of a CAP is not a permanent tiering. If someone discovers something awesome for an underpowered CAP that's been rejected for 9 months straight and then it picks up and is amazing in the next round's "All-CAP" test metagame, it may be accepted from then on. We are not proposing the removal of any CAPs.

 

[Dominion]

While that sounds great on paper Rising_Dusk, you have to ask yourself how long will it take us to revote these CAPs back in? The biggest concer now is the process itself. Smogon is ssllooww when it comes to voting and we all know it.

I agree with Elevator Music, The Underpowered clause is unnecessary. If a CAP is underpowered, then it will slowly fall into oblivion anyway so theres really no need to remove it simply based on it's 'power'. Also, our CAPs are capable of having gimmicks attached to them as their staple playstyle and who's to say if a gimmick is holding it's own? It may not be metagame shattering but it still has it's nitch. Kinda like Breloom with Poison Heal being it's nitch. Not to mention, if it is removed, then how are we suppose to experiment and find these new ways of play or new techniques? Remove this clause all together.

The metagame clause is still undefined. whether its suppose to be large in scope or not. I'm going to put it really, really simply: If a CAP is breaking the geenral metagame or shifting it massively, then it most likely already broke the overpowered clause. A CAP cannot shift a metagame to such a degree without the CAP itself being powerful. Wobbuffet is probably the only pokemon I can think of that would be breaking the metagame clause but it also broke the overpowered clause (unmatched support). So, why even bother with it? Its just a lot of words that could be, in the future, misused or confusing later on. Merge it with Overpowered clause because in all honesty, the metagame shift is always the secondary effect of an 'uber' pokemon anyway. Garchomp broke the oveprowered clause and coincidentally, broke the metagame clause as well. Everybody HAD to have a Garchomp revenge killer and a Garchomp Revenger Killer-Revenger Killer. This is of course a generalization but you get the idea.

 

[Elevator Music]

The metagame clause is still undefined. whether its suppose to be large in scope or not. I'm going to put it really, really simply: If a CAP is breaking the geenral metagame or shifting it massively, then it most likely already broke the overpowered clause. A CAP cannot shift a metagame to such a degree without the CAP itself being powerful. Wobbuffet is probably the only pokemon I can think of that would be breaking the metagame clause but it also broke the overpowered clause (unmatched support). So, why even bother with it? Its just a lot of words that could be, in the future, misused or confusing later on. Merge it with Overpowered clause because in all honesty, the metagame shift is always the secondary effect of an 'uber' pokemon anyway. Garchomp broke the oveprowered clause and coincidentally, broke the metagame clause as well. Everybody HAD to have a Garchomp revenge killer and a Garchomp Revenger Killer-Revenger Killer. This is of course a generalization but you get the idea.

While I mostly agree with you that as-is the metagame characteristic is usually just a symptom of something worse, I think it should stay because of cases like Wobbuffet's where it might not necessarily be filed under the overpowered characteristic.

However we may both be just reading the characteristic in a way that wasn't intended, in which case it probably needs slightly more clarification, though I know we want to keep it as vague as possible...

 

[Rising_Dusk]

No, you both seem to be getting it right. Oftentimes, a Pokemon drastically altering the metagame does go along with it being utterly and abhorrently broken in some other way, but not necessarily. Wobbuffet is a perfect example of this, as you both have already mentioned.

While that sounds great on paper Rising_Dusk, you have to ask yourself how long will it take us to revote these CAPs back in? The biggest concer now is the process itself. Smogon is ssllooww when it comes to voting and we all know it.

Until the next round begins. Smogon has, in the past, been slow about this whole process. However, note that how Smogon handled Suspect testing in the past is nothing like what we will have here. Every round (starting at the end of every CAP), all CAPs are retested. If some new revelation has been had since then, then it will be tested and a CAP may be approved who was otherwise rejected based on the underpowered characteristic.

 

[Dominion]

I suggest holding off on this process as a whole just so we can see how the movepool restrictions play out for the next CAP. The movepool restrictions may completely alter playstyle on existing CAPs and the first CAP that has the restrictions placed on it. If the movepool restrictions don't make every CAP implode then I would suggest enacting these clauses almost immediately.

I still dislike the Underpowered clause but it wouldn't matter unless the CAP was as useful as Luvdisc or the community had some kinda rally against it. But the rest of the clauses are obvious and sound. The Metagame clause can still be merged with the Overpowered clause if you wanted to simplify things but its honestly not that important at the moment.

Anyway thats all I really got to say concerning this subject. This'll be my last post here. The idea is sound and has no glaring holes except the concept clause. As the metagame shifts, the original concept may become obsolete. Such as if SR, Spikes and T.Spikes were removed from the game in general, Fidgit may need a new concept, but thats simply evolution. But it doesn't really matter to me if something like that would occur. There are positives and negatives to both sides of that issue.

 

[Rising_Dusk]

Alright, at Doug's request, I am posting a Proposed Conclusion based on the general consensus of this thread and the IRC crowd. This will be up for a bit, giving people a chance to say "Hey, I hate that!" or whatever and give us an opportunity for adjusting the proposed conclusion as necessary depending on the level of support for opposing opinions.

_________________________________________________

There will be no revisions for CAP Pokemon at all in the future*.

*The one exception to this is that all of the previous 10 CAPs will have the following actions taken on them.

1. They will first be reverted to their original forms.
2. They will undergo a movepool revision in accordance with the Movepool Policy Review conclusions drawn in this post.
3. The exact details of this revision will be decided by DougJustDoug and the forum moderators, including who is running it and how.

CAP Pokemon can be rejected from the CAP metagame based on a process as elaborated below and with the listed rejection characteristics.

All-CAP Metagame Testing Process

• There will exist a 2 week period following the playtest metagame of a CAP process where all CAPs, including those that have been previously rejected, are allowed on the ladder. During this period, all people are encouraged to experiment with the CAPs in any way. This will henceforth be known as the All-CAP Metagame.
• This voting stage is not necessarily run by the TL of the CAP whose playtesting period just ended.
• Users would apply via a public application process similar to how the PRC is selected. This must be done after the "All-CAP" metagame ends for each round.
  • Users who apply would need to supply their relevant CAP server user name, rating, and deviation.
  • Users who apply should meet the very loose rating/deviation requirements of 1600/70.
  • Users who do not meet those requirements may still apply for permission to vote, but will have to make a convincing case that they understand the current CAP metagame enough to vote.
  • Either meeting the voting requirements or writing a cogent case for one's understanding of the current CAP metagame is necessary for being eligible to vote.
  • Users who apply would have to answer a few to-be-determined questions in the application about the metagame on the whole.
• Users who move on in the accepted voters list go on to vote on CAP rejections/acceptances.
  • Users would submit 4-8 sentences per CAP they want to see rejected explaining why and citing the relevant rejection characteristics.
  • Users would not have to submit sentences for CAPs that they feel do not need to be rejected.
• These votes are tallied by the users in charge (CAP Server Moderators, CAP Forum Moderators, and specially-chosen members of the community)
• The users in charge reserve the right to deny the individual CAP vote for any specific voter based on the quality of the individual vote. Accepted to-vote users are not guaranteed that their votes will be counted if they shirk on the quality of their vote.
• A CAP is rejected from the upcoming round of the CAP metagame if more than 50% of accepted users vote it to be rejected, regardless of which clauses were cited.
• A rejection list is posted for the next round and the rejected CAP Pokemon are removed from the CAP ladder on the Create-A-Pokemon server.

The rejection characteristics that may be cited in votes are as follows:

Overpowered Characteristic
A CAP Pokémon is rejected from the CAP metagame if, in common battle conditions, it is capable of either sweeping through a significant portion of teams in the metagame with little effort, walling and stalling out a significant portion of the metagame, or consistently setting up a situation in which it makes it substantially easier for other Pokemon to sweep.

Underpowered Characteristic
A CAP Pokémon is rejected from the CAP metagame if, in common battle conditions, it is unable to sweep much of the metagame, wall or stall out much of the metagame, or set up a situation with any regularity where other Pokemon can more easily sweep. A CAP Pokémon cannot be rejected by this characteristic on the first round of the metagame after its creation.

Concept Characteristic
A CAP Pokémon is rejected from the CAP metagame if, in common battle and metagame conditions, it functions in a vastly different manner from the concept given to it by the CAP project that created it.

Metagame Characteristic
A CAP Pokémon is rejected from the CAP metagame if its presence in the metagame causes a set of common battle conditions or encourages a set of common battle strategies that are significantly different from the standard Pokemon metagame. A CAP Pokémon cannot be rejected by this characteristic on the first round of the metagame after its creation.

 

[Umbreon Dan]

Alright, at Doug's request, I am posting a Proposed Conclusion based on the general consensus of this thread and the IRC crowd. This will be up for a bit, giving people a chance to say "Hey, I hate that!" or whatever and give us an opportunity for adjusting the proposed conclusion as necessary depending on the level of support for opposing opinions.

I haven't been following this thread (or #cap) very closely for the past several days (exams and unfinished work...) but it seems to me from reading this thread that the "general consensus" is that the underpowered characteristic should be dropped. I've opposed it from the beginning, and most of the users active in this thread seem to agree that "hey, we hate that".

I really don't like the underused characteristic for a simple reason. What if the concept itself is a niche concept? Or a concept that is "weak" on purpose, causing it to see less use, but somehow that concept does make us learn a lot of the metagame?

I don't get the point of the "Underused Characteristic". It doesn't help to solve any accessability problems, nor does it help "get it right the first time" (getting it PERFECT is a little too much to ask...).

EDIT: I agree with EM concerning UU characteristic, similar to OU there is nothing stopping you from using UUs in OU if you feel the need to. I think Doug and RD mean something else to what I am getting from you guys, so could you please elaborate more on that? You shouldn't be banning CAPs from a metagame just because they suck, you should only be banning them if they are broken. Move them to CAP UU if you feel obligated to, but I don't see any reason to ban them from CAP OU because of that.

This is a very poorly defined characteristic. Almost by definition anything we give Stealth Rock will never fail under this characteristic (unless it has Klutz which prevents the use of Focus Sash). CAP Pokemon in general will not fall under this unless another CAP makes them almost entirely obsolete (like Arghonaut to offensive Syclant), in which case one is only "underused" because the other is arguably damaging to the metagame.

2) I still dislike the "underpowered" characteristic.

We don't need this. I think it's definitely uneccessary. Ending up with an unused pokemon is a good enough incentive for a TL, and for the community for that matter, to make a working CAP. It does not need to be banned because it's not good enough. I said before in this topic that just because an unused pokemon still slightly pushes us away from the standard metagame, we should not remove it from the ladder, as in a slight metagame shift or discovery of some gimmick set it has potential to become good.

I think someone mentioned on IRC that the characteristic is mainly there to keep the TL from making a bad CAP. That's not really a good argument, partly because of what I just wrote, but also because if we have doubts that a user would make a bad CAP, we shouldn't pick them as TL.

I agree with Elevator Music, The Underpowered clause is unnecessary. If a CAP is underpowered, then it will slowly fall into oblivion anyway so theres really no need to remove it simply based on it's 'power'. Also, our CAPs are capable of having gimmicks attached to them as their staple playstyle and who's to say if a gimmick is holding it's own? It may not be metagame shattering but it still has it's nitch. Kinda like Breloom with Poison Heal being it's nitch. Not to mention, if it is removed, then how are we suppose to experiment and find these new ways of play or new techniques? Remove this clause all together.

[...] I still dislike the Underpowered clause but it wouldn't matter unless the CAP was as useful as Luvdisc or the community had some kinda rally against it. But the rest of the clauses are obvious and sound. The Metagame clause can still be merged with the Overpowered clause if you wanted to simplify things but its honestly not that important at the moment.

I don't see why it would stay with this much opposition :/

 

[Naxte]

Yeah, I agree with u_d. I also don't like the Underpowered characteristic and can't see how it should be included with that much opposition. To me, if something's hardly used, it's just fine being included as... well, it's hardly used and would be rarely encountered. Sure, by the fact of it being there, the metagame is slightly different from Standard, I suppose... But the point of these characteristics are to make sure that the metagame remains accessible to people and doesn't different significantly from OU. If a Pokemon's hardly seen in Standard, that means that it's not affecting the metagame to any significant degree and the end result is it's barely, if at all, making the tier the same different from Standard.

Yes, you could argue about that since it's rare, it doesn't really matter, and it's better to just ban it, thinking about what could happen it those few matches where it does show up, but that's rather pathetic logic to me. I mean, would be ban stuff like Murkrow on the OU ladder because it's rare and people might not know that it's faster than Honchrow and that might unfairly catch them by surprise and lose the match (after all, it's enough work memorizing the base stats/speed tiers and such of Pokemon that actually appear commonly in Standard; do we need people losing because they don't memorize the speed tiers of practically every Pokemon)? Or what about Honchrow itself--it's rare in Standard and has a bit of a unique Speed Tier (with Scarf and Max Speed, it just barely outspeeds Max Speed Base 130's... like Jolteon) that people might not know about. Or the other NFE's that are faster than their evolutions, like Electabuzz, Magneton, and Anorith (heck, most people probably don't know Armaldo's stats off-hand--I know I don't)? And that's without going to more complete gimmics like Remoraid and Onix.

The point here is that we'd never ban those Pokemon in OU, despite the fact that they're practically never seen, most people probably don't know the exact speed tiers and such, and will quite possibly lose to them because they're caught by surprise by stuff like Anorith. Why? Beyond that just not being how OU works, it's because those Pokemon are just gimmicks that you won't be very often, if at all, in Standard, and thus even if the surprise costs you one or two matches, that's all it will do. It's not something worth banning them over.

Now, I know CAP's a different situation from Standard, but still, if we wouldn't ban stuff like Annorith for what amounts to "causing losses based on surprise factor" in OU, I don't see why we'd do so in CAP. If a Pokemon's not seen enough to worry about, then there's no point in banning it, IMO, as it clearly isn't doing any real harm (of course, there are exceptions like Wobbuffet, but that was only low in usage because people refused to use it due to it being broken in the first place) there. Sure, it will cause a few surprise losses, but no more so than any other rarely seen Pokemon or gimmick set, which would be allowed either way, so I don't see a sense in applying a different standard to the CAPs here, essentially just because their CAP. In either case, you'd need to look up the stats quickly to not be caught off-guard, but it's mostly irrelevant due to how infrequently they're seen, so I don't see the need to ban them for such a reason.


tl;dr version: If a CAP turns out to be UU for whatever reason, it basically becomes no different from any other gimmick set/Pokemon species that may catch someone off guard, but is mostly irrelevant just due to how rarely its seen, like Annorith or Murkrow. We wouldn't ban Anorith or Murkrow for that reason though, so banning a CAP under the same logic seems just as silly to me.

Edit: Beyond that, thinking it over, I'm not really liking the Metagame Characteristic. I mean, every CAP added is going to change the metagame to some degree or another. How exactly are we supposed to define how much is too much though? I can't really think of a fair way of doing that. Except in extreme cases (where they would most likely be banned due to being too powerful or something anyway), what comes down to a significant deviation pretty much comes down to personal opinion.

There's just no real objective standard you can use to ban something under that Characteristic, so I'm just scared that the clause will simply be used to just ban CAPs that a large group of people just don't like, but aren't actually game-breaking or a failure of the concept or anything. As the characteristic can't really be defined objectively and any CAP, by virtue of being a CAP, can be argued to have altered the metagame to some degree, I can't help but to fear that it might end up being used that way. I certainly hope that it won't, and know that most people wouldn't use the characteristic like that, but it leaves the possibility open, which I'm not liking.

But either way the big problem really just how impossible it is to define what is and what isn't broken under that characteristic. I know the characteristics are supposed to be vague, but even so, at least under the three normal characteristics and ones like this UU characteristic, you can objectively pretty argue which Pokemon needs to go. With this though, I just don't see how exactly you can draw a line of how much deviation is too much. Perhaps I'm just worrying too much on this one, and I wouldn't be surprised if I am, but it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I'm hesitant about it being included as a result.

 

[Rising_Dusk]

I'm going to chime in one last time why the Underpowered characteristic needs to exist.

These are not ban characteristics like OU or UU
​

We are not rejecting CAPs for being broken alone, we are judging their success. If a CAP is poorly made in that it doesn't meet its concept, it's a poor CAP and should be rejected. If a CAP is poorly made and forces the metagame to be utterly unrecognizable, it is a poor CAP and should be rejected. If a CAP is broken beyond all belief and might as well be an Uber, it is a poor CAP and should be rejected. Similarly, if a CAP turns out to be utterly useless in the metagame and it does absolutely nothing, it is poorly made and should be rejected. Every single person that has posted in this thread and I have discussed this with on IRC suddenly understood, yet never posted a second/third/whatever time to confirm that. It's important that you be a part of the IRC discussions here in order to know exactly what is favored/understood/whatever. There needs to be an underpowered characteristic to let the forum community know that they have created a poor CAP when it is underpowered.

For example, Naxte, the case you present for why it shouldn't exist would only be true if these were ban characteristics like OU/UU. They are not. They are success characteristics. That's why they differ. That's why we don't call them bans, but rather rejections.

 

[Dominion]

Dusk, just because a CAP is underpowered doesn't mean it failed at it's intended goals.

If a CAP is considered underpowered and has as low as a 0.1% useage rate, it's stilling affecting those people who use it (and those people suprised to see it in use), thus it's still effective to some degree. so, there is no sound arguement for removing it based on it's status in power.

Now, if a CAP was made poorly, and does not fit it's parameters made for it in the concept section of the process AND it's underpowered, then I could see some arguement. But it's a fairly weak one as the CAP is still affecting the metagame in some way.

I suggest we vote on the clause. Because there seems to be arguements on both sides whether or not it (underpowered) clause should stay.

Another small arguement against it is the practicallity. The trivial (or not) work needed to remove these CAPs from the metagame is not worth the effort. If the CAP is underpowered, then, like I said earlier, it'll fall into oblivion anyway, so you honestly didn't change much. But this is a minut case.

 

[DougJustDoug]

I'm not convinced that a vote is warranted for this yet. PR threads are debates, not polls. And as debates go -- I have not seen very many arguments against the Underpowered Characteristic that are on-topic with the OP. But, I don't want to just say "Your arguments are crap, I'm ignoring you." Instead, I'm going to frame the issue regarding the Underpowered Characteristic, and see if anyone has any valid arguments against it.

I'll try to simplify this down to a few key issues, and I would like people to specifically address these issues only, so we can draw this PR thread to a close.

The Proposal:
We want the server community to act as the final judge on the "success" of the CAP forum creations.
​

In simplified terms, that is the proposal. And thus far, it has not been significantly opposed. So, for the remainder of this thread, let's assume that the proposal is generally a good idea. We all pretty much agree that having qualified server participants vote on the "success" of CAPs, could be a good new process change for the CAP project as a whole. So, for every CAP we create, the server community is going to collectively judge every CAP and say:

"Hey great job guys! We think this CAP pokemon was created well, is a good addition to the game, and we think it successfully represents the goals we aspire to when making new pokemon."

OR

"Uh, no. I know you tried your best over there on the forum, but this CAP pokemon really didn't work out too well. It's not a pokemon that we think represents the goals of this CAP, or it just isn't a good pokemon for top-quality battling in the standard metagame."

In common language, those are the two "votes" that we are proposing in this PR. That's what we mean when we refer to "Accepting" or "Rejecting" a CAP pokemon. People keep talking about "bans" in this thread -- and banning has very little to do with this PR. Banning is something we do in the standard metagame, and it is solely concerned with removing imbalanced pokemon.

This proposal is not about banning pokemon, it is about determining if a CAP project is a "success" or not.

I put "success" in quotes, because defining THAT WORD is the key to this whole PR thread. What is "success" for a CAP project?

• We generally agree that if a CAP pokemon is too powerful, then that CAP project was not a "success".
  
  
• We generally agree that if a CAP pokemon does not fulfill its original concept, then that project was not a "success".
  
  
• We somewhat agree that if a CAP pokemon dramatically alters the basic battle techniques and basic battle strategies of the metagame -- then that CAP project was not a "success". Some people think this probably could not happen unless the CAP pokemon is egregiously overpowered as well -- but, no one really believes that we are intentionally trying to make CAP pokemon that turn the entire metagame on its ear. So, we agree that if that happened as a result of making a single CAP pokemon, then yeah, that's not a "success".

OK, so that's three generally agreed criteria. If we made a CAP pokemon that met any of those three conditions, we would NOT stand up and say "Great work, CAP forum! Thank you so much for making that pokemon." We do not want to intentionally make CAP pokemon like that.

So, that brings us to the issue of underpowered pokemon, in relation to the proposal.

Do we think that underpowered CAP pokemon are "successful" results of a CAP project?

Before arguing the definition of underpowered, I want to first determine if anyone out there is seriously saying:

"I would stand up and applaud the CAP forum if they make a pokemon that is not very effective in battle in the standard metagame."

I'm intentionally overstating it, but it defines the question at hand. Many people have said "Underpowered pokemon don't hurt anything." -- but I don't think that is addressing the real issue with the characteristic. The Underpowered Characteristic is more of an "acceptance criteria" than a "rejection criteria". Perhaps we should reword all the criteria to reflect that distinction. Because people keep thinking of this in terms of "banning" a pokemon because it's not good enough. And that's an oxymoron, if you define "banning" in terms of "removing pokemon for being too powerful". So, let's not mention the Underpowered Characteristic in terms of what "harm" it does. But, instead let's consider the argument in terms of whether an underpowered CAP is a "success" or not. Does anyone disagree with ANY of the following statements?:

• "We try to make good battling pokemon on the CAP project."
• "We like it when the CAP forum makes pokemon that are able to be used effectively in the standard metagame."
• "We choose concepts that are intended to be viable in OU play."
• "In the past, when CAP pokemon were not powerful enough to be used effectively in top OU play, we revised the pokemon to be more powerful, because they were not good enough."

Are any of those statements incorrect? Because if you agree with those statements -- then you should agree with the Underpowered Characteristic. Because the Underpowered Characteristic is simply an extension of the general principles of those statements.

If you agree with the general proposal, which is to pass judgement on CAP pokemon -- then how can you justify us rating an underpowered CAP as a "success"? This is not a proposal to vote on CAP pokemon to be "Terrible" or "Not Terrible". It is a vote to categorize CAP pokemon as "Successful" or "Not Successful". In those terms, the Underpowered Characteristic makes a whole lot of sense.

And thus far in this thread -- no one has presented many real arguments refuting it. So if you want to argue against it, please give me logical reasons that an underpowered CAP pokemon would be a good and desirable result of a given CAP project.

 

[eric the espeon]

lets try...

I think that having an UnderUsed/powered (they are effectively interchangeable, since usage is almost entirely based on power) characteristic in any form would push the CaP project further towards the mentality that "more is always better, unless the result is broken", which is in my opinion extremely harmful to the metagame we create, the lessons we learn, and the community as a whole. It means that rather than creating truly balanced Pokemon in a natural way, because people do actually want balance, we have to rely on an ever tighter net of restrictions and rules, which you have to avoid and push as far as possible in order to win polls. If people know that there is any possibility whatsoever that their creation will be rejected simply because it is not strong enough, they will push against it and give it more.

As for direct reasons, it depends on how underused is underused. I do not think that any Pokemon that ends up in the top 50 or even 70 is too weak. If a Pokemon is so weak that it cannot function, it's niche is useless and uninteresting or it is entirely outclassed, then it can be deemed a failure by the concept characteristic. This would in practice never happen, we will never make a Pokemon which has no niche, but even if it does there is no need for this criteria. If a Pokemon sits at 35th most used, holding a place on some teams and doing a perfectly good job, I would argue it can be an entirely successful CaP.

Each Pokémon should add something new or necessary to the metagame, hopefully making the metagame more balanced, and increasing the number of viable Pokémon available for competitive play.

A Pokemon that goes straight to the top 5 certainly adds something new to the game, but inversely it is very likely to reduce the number of viable options and make the game less balanced. A Pokemon which holds a niche role, something like Forretress, Empoleon, or even Cresselia would teach us a huge amount about competitive Pokemon (out of the first 5 CaPs the one I learned most from was Pyroak, which resided significantly lower in usage than any current CaPs). And they would do this while leaving the standard metagame largely intact, rather than distorting it immensely.

Let us remember that just because a Pokemon is not top 10 does not suddenly make it uncompetitive. It means that you can't just throw it on any team and win, but many of the most successful teams ever made rely very heavily on unusual Pokemon (try telling Obi's Stall team Tentacruel is not competitive). Having an important role in just a few great teams is not a bad thing. Having to think about a Pokemon before it is effective is not a bad thing. But both of these would prevent most Pokemon from reciving the kind of use we have grown to expect from CaPs, and tempt the use of any Underpowered Characteristic.

The CaP project intends to learn by making, and I am certain that you learn some of important and all of the most relevant lessons from what does not rise to the top 10. Even if the UnderUsed characteristic is NeverUsed, it will have an impact on people's perception of weaker CaPs, and make them much less likely to be created. This would be a huge loss in my opinion, especially if we did end up removing an interesting but not top level OU Pokemon.

So, even though my voice should probably not count for anything here any more, I entirely oppose the inclusion of an underpowered characteristic and the spirit behind it. Competitively interesting or "good" =/= Powerful. It requires minimal power, and if even that basic effectiveness is missing will be rejected by concept. A Pokemon can be rarely seen and still fulfil the goals of CaP adequately.


Edit: I also think that this:

The Pokémon created by the CAP project are intended to be used in competitive metagame play. That is the primary factor driving the design and construction process.

may be easily misinterpreted as

The Pokémon created by the CAP project are intended to be common in competitive metagame play. That is the primary factor driving the design and construction process.

which, as I understand it, is not correct. As I read it that sentence is intended to make it clear that the Pokemon we create should consider competitive interests, the Pokemon should be "usable" and not "broken" while giving something interesting to the metagame. Them being used more does not somehow fulfil this to a greater extent, so long as the Pokemon is a reasonable choice for a competitive player (on the right team, of course) the Pokemon is used. And the driving factor is not making it more used, it is making it interesting to use, and making it's effects on the metagame interesting.

 

[Deck Knight]

I'm terrible at tiering discussions, but since this isn't tiering from what I've heard I will pipe in again and risk sounding foolish.

What is success?

This is what we need to define. We need to explicitly state that after playtesting, the only thing that matters for allowance into the CAP metagame is performance in the CAP metagame. If a CAP is too overpowered or unable to break into CAP OU using the analytical tools we have at our disposal during a playtest period we should explicitly state that and not put it up to a vote. This means the all CAP playtest period should be long enough to solidify statistically significant OU or UU status.

This will get us to the Underpowered characteristic. No voting, no paragraphs, just pure, unadulterated removal until the next playtesting period where perhaps a new CAP will make it viable again.

The overpowered characteristic will be addressed using Smogon's tiering process as amalgamated in the Overpowered characteristic. This makes the All CAP metagame a de facto Suspect Playtest.

The CAP metagame is going to be different from the OU metagame. ALL of our CAPs are supposed to disrupt OU in some way, and therefore the inclusion of any of them leads to a metagame and new users need to download the sprites and learn the threats just like they would be in any other metagame they wanted to excel at. Thus all CAP's are already a "success" when it comes to influencing OU. If we have a metagame characteristic it should apply only to full CAP and will likely involve the Overpowered characteristic anyway.

As far as concepts, this is simple. If you want to enforce it, either ban all the CAPs with no concepts or assign them each a revision project that will find a concept for them and implement that. That is the only way concept can be fair to all CAP Pokemon in any sense, though it's still the most vague because concepts are what the CAPs are designed to do in standard OU, not CAP OU. Concept Characteristic is thus the weakest and least deserving of consideration.

Point blank I'm fine with whatever we decide to do with the CAP metagame, I just want the reasoning behind it to be solid and not some arbitrary measure of "success." If we treat it like an actual metagame and let things shift in and out based on solid characteristics I'm fine, but I want each characteristic to apply equally to all CAPs and whatever that entails.

 

[Rising_Dusk]

I agree. We should not be trying to claim whether a CAP failed or succeeded based on what we do with this PR. We need to work this PR so that we can organize the CAP metagame alone. That is the key here, so let's focus on that. We will not say that a CAP has failed or succeeded based on the outcome of its acceptance or rejection, rather we are simply moving it in or out of the metagame for organization and fairness' sake of the server players. I think this point is paramount.

I think that having an UnderUsed/powered (they are effectively interchangeable, since usage is almost entirely based on power) characteristic in any form would push the CaP project further towards the mentality that "more is always better, unless the result is broken", which is in my opinion extremely harmful to the metagame we create, the lessons we learn, and the community as a whole.

Also, after a discussion on IRC, I agree with this. We should not rule out concepts or CAPs that might end up looking like Breloom or Ninjask, because we can learn a lot from them, yet they might not end up brilliantly strong. It is important that we do not scare the forum community away from using such concepts simply because they might get rejected later on.

For that reason, I now support getting rid of the Underpowered Characteristic, but keeping the other 3.

 

[Naxte]

That is the only way concept can be fair to all CAP Pokemon in any sense, though it's still the most vague because concepts are what the CAPs are designed to do in standard OU, not CAP OU. Concept Characteristic is thus the weakest and least deserving of consideration.

I believe Deck has just hit upon a very interesting point here, which I can't believe I didn't catch myself until now. First, of course, is what would we do with the concept characteristic in the case of the first three CAPs? They don't have concepts, so they can't be considered successes or failures by that characteristic, as is. Also, since we're not doing revisions anymore under the terms of this PR, we can't just retroactively assign them ones or anything. So what do we do? Just ignore them? Not retroactively use this characteristic at all? Consider them "failures" due to not having concepts and just remove them?

But that's not the part of it that struck my interest. The thing that did that, was Deck bringing up the point of Standard OU and CAP OU. CAPs are built with standard OU in mind--all other CAPs are to be ignored when designing a CAP. Yet under the Concept Characteristic, we'd be basing how well it fulfilled it's concept based on the CAP metagame. It doesn't take much thinking to see how counter-intuitive this is. It doesn't matter at all if a CAP isn't able to fulfill it's concept in the CAP metagame, as it was never designed to, and it's hardly logical to consider a Pokemon a "failure" for not doing something it was never designed to. The only place the Concept Characteristic would at all be relevant is during Playtesting period. As long as the CAP fulfills its concept there, it's a success--whether it continues to do so after that point, in the CAP metagame, is totally irrelevant, as that has nothing to do with the Concept the CAP was designed on, and thus it doesn't make sense to consider it as a failure or a success in that environment.

...That is, except in one case.... if you actually want to beg the question, and force us to ask ourselves again what metagame is more relevant to focus on when designing a CAP: the CAP metagame or Standard OU. However, I'm pretty sure it's established by now, especially since it's pretty much the point of this PR thread in the first place (well, it's a related idea that naturally follows, in any case), that Standard is what we need to be focusing on when designing a CAP. So I'm severely doubting we'd want to actually re-ask that question and consider making the CAP metagame the testing environment for the Playtest period again or anything.

As a result of this, I just can't see how it makes sense to consider a CAP a failure or success based on whether or not it fulfills its concept in an environment it was never made to, and thus can't see the reason of using that as a characteristic.

Edit: Didn't see R_D's latest reply as I was originally typing this up. Anyway, even if it's not about banning or unbanning, or even success or failure, but just organizing the CAP metagame, I don't see how the Concept characteristic exactly helps with that, as it's still applying a standard to a Pokemon that it was never meant to fulfill. Leaving it in, at least as is, will as a result just make the community focus more on making the CAP fulfill it's concept in the CAP metagame than in Standard, as whether it succeeds or fails in Standard won't really affect it, but how well it performs in CAP decides whether it will stay or go. This is naturally problematic (as it will make us get inaccurate results during the Playtesting period due to the increased focus on CAP, and thus kind of defeat the purpose of Playtesting in the first place), so at least as is, I'm just not liking it at all.

Now, if we want to change the Concept Characteristic to more or less something like a consideration of how well it stuck to its concept during its playtesting period, that would be more acceptable (but would still make us figure out what to do with Syclant, Revenankh, and Pyroak under it), but either way, this point that DK brought up leaves me really feeling that we can't just leave it as is.

 

[NARFNra]

But that's not the part of it that struck my interest. The thing that did that, was Deck bringing up the point of Standard OU and CAP OU. CAPs are built with standard OU in mind--all other CAPs are to be ignored when designing a CAP. Yet under the Concept Characteristic, we'd be basing how well it fulfilled it's concept based on the CAP metagame. It doesn't take much thinking to see how counter-intuitive this is. It doesn't matter at all if a CAP isn't able to fulfill it's concept in the CAP metagame, as it was never designed to, and it's hardly logical to consider a Pokemon a "failure" for not doing something it was never designed to. The only place the Concept Characteristic would at all be relevant is during Playtesting period. As long as the CAP fulfills its concept there, it's a success--whether it continues to do so after that point, in the CAP metagame, is totally irrelevant, as that has nothing to do with the Concept the CAP was designed on, and thus it doesn't make sense to consider it as a failure or a success in that environment.

In the CaP Mission Statement, it states

The Pokémon created by the CAP project are intended to be used in competitive metagame play. Each Pokémon should add something new or necessary to the metagame, hopefully making the metagame more balanced, and increasing the number of viable Pokémon available for competitive play.

As such, CaPs are designed to be part of the "metagame", which doesn't specify standard OU. If a pokemon is tested in the CaP OU and doesn't fulfill it's concept, it's not like we can just create some sort of Standard OU + CAP # metagame, except during the current testing process. If a CaP is tested in standard OU and DOES fulfill it's concept, this doesn't help it any once playtesting ends, as the metagame never regresses back to the OU state it was in in the playtest period.

Let's take Arghonaut as an example. Arghonaut's point was to check the top 5 pokemon in the CAP METAGAME, not the standard, and it worked quite well at the time. This may have changed, but it was still meant to effect the CaP metagame in it's concept.

...That is, except in one case.... if you actually want to beg the question, and force us to ask ourselves again what metagame is more relevant to focus on when designing a CAP: the CAP metagame or Standard OU. However, I'm pretty sure it's established by now, especially since it's pretty much the point of this PR thread in the first place (well, it's a related idea that naturally follows, in any case), that Standard is what we need to be focusing on when designing a CAP. So I'm severely doubting we'd want to actually re-ask that question and consider making the CAP metagame the testing environment for the Playtest period again or anything.

If you read the posts by Doug and Dusk, and listen to them on irc, they're basically just proposing a way to organize the (currently) very chaotic CaP metagame. The whole point of the PR is to affect our current CaP metagame, not to turn CaP into Standard. In fact, Doug himself said the accessibility added by the plan was merely a "side effect".

Edit: Didn't see R_D's latest reply as I was originally typing this up. Anyway, even if it's not about banning or unbanning, or even success or failure, but just organizing the CAP metagame, I don't see how the Concept characteristic exactly helps with that, as it's still applying a standard to a Pokemon that it was never meant to fulfill. Leaving it in, at least as is, will as a result just make the community focus more on making the CAP fulfill it's concept in the CAP metagame than in Standard, as whether it succeeds or fails in Standard won't really affect it, but how well it performs in CAP decides whether it will stay or go. This is naturally problematic (as it will make us get inaccurate results during the Playtesting period due to the increased focus on CAP, and thus kind of defeat the purpose of Playtesting in the first place), so at least as is, I'm just not liking it at all.

One very important thing that should be noted is that if a CaP is made well, then it should be able to perform it's job in any environment even remotely similar to OU. If, for example, Dusknoir was moved to a metagame with the same average pokemon BSR or BST or whatever as our CaP and Standard metagames, it would still be a wall. If something like Fidgit were in another metagame, I don't doubt people would still utilize Persistent to great affect If a pokemon fulfills it's concept in the CaP metagame, it would likely work in the Standard meta, barring something like the "Partners in Crime" concept if it was chosen to work with another CaP.

Personally, I believe that at least most of this PR should be let through. If we must change the Concept clause, that would work I suppose, as it isn't the most liked of clauses, but I think the Metagame and Uber clauses should get through.

---Sorry if I replied to the wrong points---

 

[Dominion]

hmm, that is an interesting point Naxte. If the concept clause is overbearing, or we enforce it with an ironfist, it could skew the creation process. The community will attempt to balance the CAP around the CAP metagame with all of the CAPs. Naturally, nothing would be said in a topic but everyone would have it in the back of their heads. For example, when picking a Speed tier with a ground-based CAP nobody will bring up Krilowatt's 105 speed because we are 'suppose' to be creating the CAP based on the vanilla metagame with no other CAP... But everyone would be thinking about it and planning for it, possibly on a more subconscious level. This is merely an example and probably a very plain one but it would happen.

I don't really have an opinion on the clause itself but I worry that these clauses will skew any playtesting or theorymoning during the creation process. Just throwing this out there, others have brought it up before me but I think we need to find a happy, modest medium to prevent this. We defenantly do not want to oppress creativity with the fear of removing a CAP that the community worked hard on. This fear wasn't made on purpose and is unintended of course but we have to make sure we don't spook anyone into not speaking up about an amazing idea or awesome theory.

I know these clauses are fairly basic and would help streamline the process. But only if they aren't looming over everyone's head all the time.

 

[Mattman324]

I may not be your average poster in CAP, but hear me out, I have a point that should be made sometime, that being that the Concept Clause can be very flawed.

Let's look at Kitsunoh, for example. Kitsunoh was created on the idea that it is the "Ultimate Scout". Now, the main problem (And reason it doesn't fulfil the clause) is undoubtably the large moveset, which should be toned down (I believe you are fixing this, so I won't rag on about that). Now, let's just give a hypothetical example: That Kit is banned on this clause. Now, most agree, it wasn't used as a Scout, it needs out.

But, and here is my point, what if someone WAS using them as their concept suggested - and to good effect?

Before Krillowatt came out, I might have been seen on the ladder, taking out people with my Sandstorm offense team. All of my mons had a part in the team, and of my three CAPs (Kit, Strata, and Colossoil), they all followed - to an extent (It's not hard to have Strata be a special rock type, and therefore different than the type suggests, so no problems there... but this metagame isn't giving Colossoil much secondary to combat,) - their initial concepts. Kitsunoh was the valuble lead (The set was ShadowStrike/Fake Out/U-turn/WillOWisp with a sash, by the way) that tried to see how much of my opponents I could. So for me, Kit has always followed the concept (My first team with it was this one). Would it be fair to remove my Ultimate Scout from my team, forcing me to choose a mon WITHOUT the options it has?

 

[Naxte]

-Various excellent points

That's all true, but I'm not sure exactly what it has to do with my point. As you yourslef admit, things have changed since Arghonaut. It was created before we started testing things in isolation in the Standard metagame, which is the thing I was really driving home at. A CAP's concept is something it's meant to fulfill during the Playtesting period, where it's tested in isolation on the Standard ladder (which is what the mission statement is referring to in that section you quoted). In other words, we decided that how well a CAP succeeds by itself in OU is the real focus of a CAP project, and the period after Playtesting ends, where all of the currently allowed CAPs are put onto the ladder, is more for fun. That isn't to say that we still can't learn from it, and that we should let it be completely disorganized or anything (and thus this PR), but it's not the metagame CAPs were designed to be tested and designed around.

Basically, what I'm trying to say, is this: when we're creating a CAP, our thoughts and focus is for the Standard OU metagame. This is not only because it's where a CAP will end up being tested, but that the primary point of a CAP is to learn about the OU metagame, both throughout the project itself and in Playtesting. In order to learn as much as we can about the standard metagame and how the concept each CAP was based around affects OU, it needs to be tested in isolation to see what just the effects of that one concept are, and to make sure that the effects of one CAP, or "variable", get confused with that of another. Thus the way the Playtesting ladder is set up.

Now, this is where the Concept Characteristic comes in. As it's currently written, the CAP is judged on how well it fulfills its concept in the CAP metagame. That's the thing, though--it's judging CAPs based on how well they fulfill their concept in CAP, despite the concept only ever being meant for isolation.

Yes, I suppose you could argue that if a CAP is truly well-made, that it should be able to fulfill its concept in any metagame, including CAP, and that's entirely true. However, while that's so, that doesn't stop there from being a problem--just as the Underpowered characteristic would have discouraged concepts akin to Pokemon like Ninjask, so to does the Concept Characteristic have such a detrimental effect on the Project, which was my key point:

Leaving it in, at least as is, will as a result just make the community focus more on making the CAP fulfill it's concept in the CAP metagame than in Standard, as whether it succeeds or fails in Standard won't really affect it, but how well it performs in CAP decides whether it will stay or go. This is naturally problematic (as it will make us get inaccurate results during the Playtesting period due to the increased focus on CAP, and thus kind of defeat the purpose of Playtesting in the first place).

As I already explained, when a CAP's being designed, it's being done with the OU metagame in mind, in order for us to fully determine what the project's effect on the Standard metagame is. The problem with the Concept Characteristic though, is that it gets in the way of this. Under it, how well a CAP performs in CAP becomes more important than it performs during Playtesting, as if it doesn't exactly fulfill the concept during Playtesting, it's not much of a problem, but if it doesn't do so in the CAP metagame, it will be removed. This is something that people will start considering in future CAPs as they're being made, even if they don't publicly say so.

As an example of why this is a problem, let's take a concept akin to Arghonaut's. The primary difference though would be that since CAPs are tested in isolation now, that it would be based around Standard and countering the threats there instead. Now then, for the purposes of argument, let's say that the CAP metagame when this occurs has completely different threats, with practically no overlap with those in Standard.

Here's where the problem comes in: the CAP is supposed to be based around countering the threats in Standard. However, the thing is, even if it doesn't exactly turn out that way, it wouldn't be a problem during Playtesting. What would be a problem, however, would be if it couldn't fulfill it's concept of "countering the top threats" in the CAP metagame. Even if people don't say so publicly, a lot of them would be considering this in the back of their heads, and potentially talking about it at places like IRC.

From there, I believe you can see where I'm going with this: as the Standard metagame doesn't exactly have an impact on the fate of the CAP, but the CAP metagame does, it wouldn't be surprising at all if, due to the Concept Characteristic, that people subtly agreed behind the scenes to make the CAP focus around countering the top threats in the CAP metagame, instead of the ones in Standard. Once Playtesting starts, the problem with this becomes obvious: due to the project essentially being manipulated to focus on CAP instead, there's not much to learn from the Playtesting period, which defeats the entire point of it. We're meant to learn from how a CAP's concept function in OU during Playtesting, but due to the Concept Characteristic dragging focus to the CAP metagame, the concept didn't turn out the way it was intended, and we weren't able to actually answer the question of the concept.

That's perhaps a bit of an extreme example, but that's the problem I have with the Concept Characteristic: even if it doesn't go quite that far, the thing is that it's asking how well something that was only ever meant to perform in Standard, performs in CAP. As a result, as a CAP's being created, there will be a subtle shift from making sure a CAP's concept succeeds in OU, to making sure it succeeds in CAP. This focus on making sure a CAP succeeds in the CAP metagame will affect the direction of the project, and thus prevent us from truly being able to answer the question of how well a CAP performs in an OU environment, as they would cease to be solely be made for it. Now, perhaps things won't be as extreme as the case in my example, but nonetheless the Concept Characteristic would create a motivation to make CAPs succeed in CAP over OU, which prevents us from getting true, "unbiased" answers from the Playtesting period, which leaves me feeling concerned about it.

 

[Rising_Dusk]

Alright, after another fiasco on IRC and an outburst of chaos in this thread, I've come to a new proposed conclusion for this, as detailed below. Many IRC users supported this as well.

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Revisions will still be allowed for the future.

There will be one (1) required revision for each of the past ten CAPs to bring them into accordance with the results of the Movepool PR beginning after this PR ends.
​

No CAP rejection/acceptance process will come to fruition.

This, unfortunately, means that this will be the 3rd PR where we've tried to propose some management for the CAP metagame, but have failed to do so.

We ultimately decided on this because if we introduce any sort of CAP rejection or acceptance criteria into the process, then people will potentially try to design CAPs for the CAP metagame instead of the OU metagame. (For example, to try to balance out a currently broken CAP in the CAP metagame) We do not want this, so we cannot implement a rejection/acceptance process.
​

 

[DougJustDoug]

Yes, I'm disappointed that we just can't seem to find a decent way to manage the CAP metagame as a whole. But, I don't think accepting/rejecting CAP pokemon is going to help the project overall. We can take a step in a positive direction by conforming all the CAPs to the current movepool guidelines, and then we'll see where we stand.

Conclusion:

• We will revert all the CAP pokemon back to their original voted forms at the time they were created.
  
  
• We will conform all CAP movepools according to the new movepool guidelines, as specified in this PR thread.