[tea_and_blues]

I've been lurking since Syclant, and contributing - rarely - since Revenankh. The rules were looser back then, and I came off as a complete dick trying to apply the art sensibilities I shared with a small group of hyper critical friends to the CAP forum. I gave brutal and totally inappropriate feedback to other artists, and other users told me to get lost. Years have passed, and I can look back and be embarrassed, but now I'm left contemplating why I've contributed so little between then and now. I long since got over my stupid days of old.

It's really because each project is so huge. I was in Mexico without internet for an entire month, and came back to find Necturna just wrapping up. There's actually a real time commitment, and I don't think many people can realistically make that time.

There's also a sense of a sort of, for want of a better phrase, "old boys network" that could frighten any newcomers. Most of this can't really be ironed out of the process, it's all natural to it - but less private, fleeting consensus-gathering on IRC might be one solution. Some of the slating decisions can look a bit mysterious. The "Nect-" debacle is a key example - sorry capefeather, you did fine throughout most of the process, but that Necturine name slate will always seem totally mystifying and alienating - and in a way it ties in with the sense of an "old boys network". The only justification I see for that slate was Rising Dusk's repeated and baseless assertion that pre-evos had to have their evo's prefixes, and the only reason why that opinion might gain such all-consuming traction seems to be that RD is a talented old hand at CAP. I could be totally off the mark, but to a casual observer that's how it looked, and it did make me less keen on participating even though it gave my submission an unexpected advantage. Nobody wants to participate in a project that starts to feel rigged, and that is a real risk with such a small number of players control the process. Basically: Be more careful, aim for variety in slates as much as anything else.

To be very clear here, I'm not saying the process is rigged - it isn't - but there's always a risk it might appear rigged to newbies. Keeping that sense of fairness is essential.

I'm here mainly for the flavour. I love competitive battling, but the fact is I have dyscalculia so I'm never going to have the flare for it possessed by those of you who can do quick battle calcs or even rough estimates. My innate sense of measurement is simply not strong enough. Having said that, I've never felt frozen out by the process because of that preference for the flavour parts. There is flavour in the stat spreads. There is flavour in the movesets. It all contributes, and there's always room for flavour-oriented critique of any part of a CAP. It strikes me as a non-issue.