[bugmaniacbob]

Sorry I took my computer apart this morning so this reply is a bit late in coming, apologies all round

Right then, I knew that there were a lot of different angles from which we could approach this, and I must say, you haven't disappointed me. That's not to say that everything that has been said is a legitimate interpretation or even worth pursuing, but I am glad that almost everyone who has come into this thread has something worth saying. That said, everyone does seem to have a different idea of what direction they want this Project to go in, so there's a lot of work in that area to be done yet. There is a lot to go through, so I will only be replying directly (or even indirectly) to your posts if something you had to say was necessarily good or bad, or rather, if it is extremely pertinent to the topic at hand.

As far as defining Risk is concerned, we certainly have a lot to sift through:

…how much you stand to lose when making a choice.

…if the scale tips in your favor, you reap unnaturally high benefits, but if the scale tips in the opponent's favor, it could cost you the match.

…taking a gamble, not on random chance, but on playing your opponent.

…where a Pokemon, that while otherwise not so great, can have great competitive value in specific situations, AND whether or not it succeeds when these situations arise is based on conscious player choice.

…getting rid of "safe options"…

…that a Pokemon is much more difficult than necessary to utilise effectively…

… putting oneself into danger to gain the upper hand, whether it be to gain momentum or to set up a sweep or anything similar to that.

…the ease of which you can take advantage of the pokemon, whether through walling it and shutting it down, knocking it out, or setting up on it and strolling through an entire team.

…the degree to which your opponent can punish you for using it.

And I should like to add on to the end of this: "Any change to be made that increases the magnitude of the consequence of its use", regardless of whether it is positive or negative.

Now, as to where I stand on this matter – at the moment, I am most convinced by the arguments put forward by Scoopapa and those similar arguments circulating – We do want a Pokemon who is risky to use. My vision for the end point of this CAP would be something that has, perhaps, a "safer" counterpart, but in itself is a risk to use by comparison – possibly it is less likely to be able to set up, but far more capable of performing the same function once set up. I use the term "set up" very loosely here, as per "execute strategy" – I very much doubt that we can succeed in making a Pokemon that conforms to Risk unless it has some specific function. As has been said before, walls, or defensive Pokemon in general are less useful if there is a Risk attached to their use, as they really have to work a majority of the time to be successful. Of course, that's not to say a risky defensive Pokemon couldn't work – I might envision it to be something that walls a large number of prominent Pokemon, unless they happen to be carrying some specific move. The difficulty here is that, were our CAP to have any significant metagame impact, such a thing would indeed become more common, and our CAP lose effectiveness because of it. Hence, this is why no similar Pokemon really exist in OU (the only exception I can think of is Gliscor, who is used for other reasons besides). As such, I would prefer to shy away from any primarily defensive interpretation of this concept, in favour of a support or offensive leaning. Feel free to disagree with me if you wish.

In other areas, I find myself agreeing with capefeather about the viability of certain moves and strategies that have been bandied about here and there, in terms of their being almost impossible to use in the current climate. Belly Drum provides an unnecessarily large power boost with too much risk behind it, and walls with Rest are generally far worse now than they ever have been thanks to new sleep mechanics and a generally faster, more offensive metagame. Some of the previously successful "high risk/reward" strategies that were prevalent in previous generations, such as Reversal Heracross and Agility SubPetaya Empoleon are no longer viable next to more safe alternatives. The latter of these is something I am interested in particularly, because it provides an example of how an extremely risky strategy became popular only after the immense reward it provided was discovered – significantly enough for Empoleon to jump to OU, even.

I am also not entirely certain about the Gastrodon example that has been brought up from time to time. Gastrodon does not only perform well against rain – it also happens to be above average against most sandstorm and Volt-turn teams, and as such is roughly the limit of an anti-metagame Pokemon – and is a vital part of the metagame, as capefeather has said, purely for the role it plays, possibly in the same manner as Celebi or specially defensive Jirachi. As such, I have come down against such opponent-related risk – which would include Colour Change and Illusion, which the CAP community has convinced me are not what we are looking for. At the same time, I am not keen on those strategies that require certain prevailing battle conditions to be successful, such as Chlorophyll Venusaur or Sand Rush Sandslash (only two examples I could think of, unfortunately). So what does this leave us with? Well, there are our classic support options, such as SmashPass and Dual screens + Healing Wish, which I think merit further looking into. However, I think that our focus should be on, as it was put by Scoopapa: "reliance on your own play and your ability to mitigate the potential downfalls of your strategy". If we could keep this in mind from now on, we have a very solid foundation upon which to move forward.

As far as the rest is concerned, I feel that we now know enough to be able to move on to the next steps – namely, deciding how we are going to implement the Risk element into CAP4 across the entire process. As such, I would like the topic of discussion to now shift to the following questions (I don't have enough time to answer them right now but you probably know what I think on each of them):

1. What should the build of our Pokemon be? (eg. Bulky offensive, hyper defensive, etc)
2. What facet of strategy should this Pokemon's focus be on? (eg. Support, hyper offence, etc)
3. In which parts of the process should we focus on Reward, and in which should we focus on Risk? (eg. Low Speed so reliance on set-up moves, etc)

Must dash now, will review later. Cheers.

EDIT: Oh and before I forget, I am particularly attached to definitions 1 and 2 of Rediamond's set, and am wondering how we might combine them in some form. Thoughts pending.