The CAP Process and Metagame

[Frostbiyt]

approved by reachzero

It has been expressed on Discord many times that the CAP metagame seems to be secondary to the process rather than both being of equal importance. I think that our goal with CAP should be to have the process and the metagame to be more integrated with each other rather than have them be seen as two separate aspects of CAP. So instead of just spinning our wheels on Discord, I thought I would make a PRC thread so that we can have a more meaningful discussion on what exactly the problem is and how we may be able to fix it.

tag

Reach told me to tag DougJustDoug

 

[SHSP]

Alright, here we go:

To anyone who knows me, this isn't a surprising statement to hear that I think the CAP Metagame and Process are equal parts of the overarching CAP Project. There's a lot of different schools of thought on this but I'm of the mind that all we really need to do is to look at the CAP Mission Statement:

The Create-A-Pokémon project fosters an interesting environment for intelligent students of the competitive Pokémon metagame to exercise both creative and analytical talents for the betterment of the competitive Pokémon community.

Both the process and the aftermath are mentioned as recipients of this "betterment," and in a modern CAP the metagame has grown to be more significant. However, just the same, the two halves of CAP have split, more or less, either focusing on metagame or process. The mission statement shows a bit of it's age when it comes to this:

The Pokémon that come out of the project are simply a by-product of the community construction process. The process is the goal—with all the discussions and discoveries that go along with it.

This is the most damnning bit of the mission statement, and the most outdated. It effectively undercuts the metagame, stating "The Pokemon don't matter; the process is CAP." In a modern CAP age with the most active metagame we've ever had, that continues to grow, this is short sighted. We have a metagame that should be equal to the process as they work best together. Metagame draws people to the process (see Gmars) and is the place where the learning that CAP strives for is done; Process helps test metagame knowledge, forcing more critical thought, and of course producing what makes the CAP metagame so interesting and different. It's a symbiotic relationship, that is being kinda crippled right now by that core tenant or philosophy that Process is CAP, and Metagame is not. The first, and most important, step to a better Process and Metagame is to put them on equal footing: Process=Metagame in terms of importance. We work best as a whole, and acting like one half is above the other is silly and downright damaging to the whole.

As of right now, the Metagame half of CAP is a bit lagging or behind the Process. It's fairly evident when you look at some of the process threads that metagame knowledge isn't exactly in high focus; a good example is the Mercliess debate in Ability thread. Clerics were thrown around as counterplay for it when they haven't existed all gen, and the argument of "starter BST isn't broken" was again often used despite obvious examples against that possibility; to go to an extreme, Naganadel was 5 BST under starter BST totals. It's really not hard to disprove these arguments, but they were thrown around as theorymon often, as were a few others. There's been bitterness between metagame players who feel secondary to process and process people who think metagame is looking to take over. Metagame players have been called names; process heads have been heavily criticized. Here's my solution: do a little bit of research on the other half than yours and cross the aisle. If you're a process person, go play some. Read some metagame threads. Watch CAPTT replays and look at usage stats. Hell, Seasonals are right there to join/watch. Go get some metagame experience in real conditions and apply them back. If you're a meta guy, go read some threads, do some history. Find out what makes good posts good posts, and be able to make some. And for the love of all that's holy, vote.

 

[Deck Knight]

Alright, here we go:

To anyone who knows me, this isn't a surprising statement to hear that I think the CAP Metagame and Process are equal parts of the overarching CAP Project. There's a lot of different schools of thought on this but I'm of the mind that all we really need to do is to look at the CAP Mission Statement:

Both the process and the aftermath are mentioned as recipients of this "betterment," and in a modern CAP the metagame has grown to be more significant. However, just the same, the two halves of CAP have split, more or less, either focusing on metagame or process. The mission statement shows a bit of it's age when it comes to this:

This is the most damnning bit of the mission statement, and the most outdated. It effectively undercuts the metagame, stating "The Pokemon don't matter; the process is CAP." In a modern CAP age with the most active metagame we've ever had, that continues to grow, this is short sighted. We have a metagame that should be equal to the process as they work best together. Metagame draws people to the process (see Gmars) and is the place where the learning that CAP strives for is done; Process helps test metagame knowledge, forcing more critical thought, and of course producing what makes the CAP metagame so interesting and different. It's a symbiotic relationship, that is being kinda crippled right now by that core tenant or philosophy that Process is CAP, and Metagame is not. The first, and most important, step to a better Process and Metagame is to put them on equal footing: Process=Metagame in terms of importance. We work best as a whole, and acting like one half is above the other is silly and downright damaging to the whole.

I don't think any of these sentiments are misplaced or inaccurate. As originally constituted the CAP Mission Statement was made when we weren't even sure we'd have a place to play CAPs at all (before even Doug's Create-A-Pokemon Server on Shoddybattle). The matter of concern is how to update it in a way that meets the inclusivity CAP tries to generate with the shift in focus, and I don't have any good suggestions for that yet.

As of right now, the Metagame half of CAP is a bit lagging or behind the Process. It's fairly evident when you look at some of the process threads that metagame knowledge isn't exactly in high focus; a good example is the Mercliess debate in Ability thread. Clerics were thrown around as counterplay for it when they haven't existed all gen, and the argument of "starter BST isn't broken" was again often used despite obvious examples against that possibility; to go to an extreme, Naganadel was 5 BST under starter BST totals. It's really not hard to disprove these arguments, but they were thrown around as theorymon often, as were a few others. There's been bitterness between metagame players who feel secondary to process and process people who think metagame is looking to take over. Metagame players have been called names; process heads have been heavily criticized. Here's my solution: do a little bit of research on the other half than yours and cross the aisle. If you're a process person, go play some. Read some metagame threads. Watch CAPTT replays and look at usage stats. Hell, Seasonals are right there to join/watch. Go get some metagame experience in real conditions and apply them back. If you're a meta guy, go read some threads, do some history. Find out what makes good posts good posts, and be able to make some. And for the love of all that's holy, vote.

For the first bit, the issue with dismissing counterplay is it's trying to use current meta knowledge to speak to future predictive viability. Taking just Merciless, one of the points was that using Toxic served as a "bank" for future sweeping potential. It was pointed out that Heal Bell/Aromatherapy thwart such strategy over multiple moves in a single move. There may be no such thing as dedicated clerics as a team role, but there are perfectly viable CAPs that have access to the move in addition to the usual OU mons and in both cases the CAPs in question had available means to check CAP, though obviously that would be based on spread. To say "there are no viable clerics in the current metagame" is not prohibitive to arguing such a strategy would be effective counterplay if the "bank Toxics to abuse Merciless" strategy were taken to its logical conclusion.

I don't want to rehash that discussion, but my deepest fear as a process person is the people we rely on to transmit meta knowledge become an exclusive club like the relationship CAP used to have with OU Users (I used a now infamous term to describe this I won't repeat in PRC because it isn't helpful to discussion) when we built for OU. It got really toxic for a few processes and that mindset absolutely can't take hold here or it will absolutely destroy both metagame and process.

 

[Frostbiyt]

Here are a few half baked ideas I've thought of so far that may help bring the process and the metagame closer together. My first idea is to add some steps to the process after the CAP is finalized. Metagame focused stuff like Next Best Thing, Partner this Pokemon, and Teambuilding Competition already exist, but it may be beneficial to add something like that to the official process. That way we can go from theorizing about the meta to actually analyzing how our creation actually performs in the meta, because what is the point of building for a competitive metagame if we don't actually discuss the competitive outcome of our creation? I think it would be beneficial to the process and hopefully bring more people in to the metagame if we implemented something like this. So the process might look like this (not including flavor stuff like art and name since that runs concurrently):

Concept > Typing > Threats > Ability > Stats > Movepool > Finished Product > Set Creation > Teambuilding Competition > Next CAP

Then, once the meta has adapted to the new CAP, we could look back and analyze the process to see what we succeeded at and failed at. Choosing when this would happen would be tricky since it wouldn't make much sense doing it right after the process ends, but it may be hard to fit in once the next project gets going.

Anyways, it's just an idea, I have more but I've got to get going.