CAP 10 CAP 10 - Part 1 - Concept Poll 1

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beej

beej

everybody walk the dinosaur
is a CAP Contributor Alumnus
There were a lot of concepts submitted this time around, but after having looked through it in great detail, I have greatly narrowed the number of choices down to 5. This slate is a representation of what I feel are the best of the best concepts submitted this time around. While there were plenty of legal concepts, I felt that there weren't that many that focused on the "big picture", and a lot of them were hung up on creating a Pokemon with some sort of quirk. These concepts piqued my interest in particular for the way they addressed fundamental issues within the game of Pokemon in its current state that are generally taken for granted.

This is a BOLD VOTE poll. You will post with the name of the concept you most want to use in bold. Hypothetically, if I were voting for Kingdra of the Sun (the example from the previous thread), I would bold it in my vote: Kingdra of the Sun. This poll will dictate the general direction we take with this CAP, so I suggest you think long and hard about your decision.

There will be no discussion in this thread, and the only posts I expect to see are bold votes. However, I encourage you to discuss and debate the concepts on the official CAP IRC channel, #cap on irc.synirc.net, or on our Shoddy Battle Server: Doug's Create-a-Pokemon Server.

Concepts in the order they were submitted:

Deck Knight said:
Concept: Dragons [No] Be Here

General Description: A Pokemon which breaks new ground in reducing the potency or usefulness of Dragon-type moves.

Justification: Dragon Steel Dragon Steel blah blah blah. One of the biggest problems with Dragons is that the only current way to defang them in the slightest is to resist Dragon STAB (e.g. be Steel type). This has generally been ineffective, no matter how many Scizor, Metagross, Bronzong, Jirachi, Skarmory, Forretress, and Heatran infest your metagame, they are eventually worn down by the sheer power of Dragon attacks combined with most Dragon's ability to slaughter them with a backup Fire, Fighting, or Ground move.

Questions To Be Answered:

- Is it even possible to stop Dragons, or are their stats/coverage too overwhelming?
- If there were a Pokemon that could actually punish, field lock, or otherwise negate Dragon Moves rather than just resist them, would their usage decline?
- If Dragon attacks are more easily addressed, will the metagame then revolve entirely on Steel types because of resistances, ushering a more defensive era? Or will Steel's weaknesses to Fire, Fighting, and Ground become a death knell simply because many effective defensive pokemon can utilize these attacks with STAB?

Explanation: While it wouldn't necessarily require an ability, it's clear that typing alone has been unable to stop this centralization. This leaves the options of ability, moves, and stats. There's no real barometer for stats because Ubers has access to even more powerful Dragons than OU. However, I think a defensive pokemon with an ability that punishes the use of Dragon moves would make them far less flippantly used. If you had a pokemon that posed enough of a threat that Mence and Latias would rather try spamming UNSTAB moves that hit this theoretical Pokemon effectively instead of Draco Meteor, that alone might prove an interesting point of study.
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Admiral_Korski said:
Name: Momentum
General Description: This will be a Pokemon that can be utilized to gain or regain momentum for a player's team at any point in the match as its primary function.
Justification: Momentum is an oft-mentioned and used aspect of competitive Pokemon battling; however, the concept itself is rather vaguely defined and never explored in concrete terms. Keeping opposing teams on the defensive? Keeping defensive teams from setting up? Forcing switches? Moving a particular team strategy forward? Good prediction? Spamming U-turn? These have all been approaches to achieving momentum, but they are also player-side and largely synonymous with "strategy," as opposed to Pokemon-side and regarding a Pokemon's role on the team. Certainly there are Pokemon like Scizor and Salamence that can achieve momentum as we know it, but there is no current niche for a "momentum Pokemon" because the concept has been purely delegated to players and not to Pokemon.
Questions to be Answered:
-How do we define momentum in terms of competitive Pokemon?
-How do different styles of play use momentum to achieve their goals?
-If indeed possible, how can one Pokemon be created to effectively achieve or maintain momentum?
-How integral to individual battles is the concept of "momentum"? Is it purely player-side strategy or can it be quantified?
-How will the different playstyles be affected by the addition of a Pokemon that can regain offensive/defensive momentum at any given point? Will offensive teams play more conservatively? Will defensive teams play more recklessly? Will it overcentralize? Will it decentralize?
Explanation: This concept could potentially teach us more about the metagame during its creation process than through actual playtesting (although I'm sure playtesting will be as useful as always), especially considering how loosely-defined the concept of "momentum" is. It will surely spark some great debates. Since momentum has largely been defined at the discretion of the battling community and takes many forms, so too could this CAP. Scizor, Blissey, Flygon, Skarmory, Magnezone, Bronzong, Celebi, Heatran, etc. can all achieve momentum according to their strengths, yet all are very different. The way I envision the concept personally is a Pokemon that is risky to stay in on if you can't OHKO it (which would have to be a common occurrence for this CAP to be successful) and is even riskier to switch into, for all types of teams (not necessarily all types of Pokemon).
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ShravanP said:
Name: Jack of All Trades (aka Unpredictable)

General Description: A Pokemon that can effectively (but not dominantly) play a vast array of different roles.

Justification:
As competitive battlers, we often like to have things predictable, to know just exactly what the opponent has in store so that we can fight it. But because of this, I feel that the number of effective team strategies has sort of plateaued, as people are making the same sorts of teams repeatedly. What I feel this metagame lacks is a true wild card, something absolutely unpredictable. As it stands, every Pokemon has its own role (or a couple of roles) that it plays and has no means to effectively operate beyond that set role. And the extent of unpredictability is one move -- once it uses one move, the opponent can more or less guess which set you're running. But what if there were a Pokemon that can run so many different sets effectively that even after using a move or two, it can still have tricks up its sleeve? I think it would certainly open up a lot of interesting possibilities for team building, team synergy, and strategy.

Questions To Be Answered:

  • Does the presence of a wildcard disrupt the proper execution of certain popular team strategies?
  • How does having a wildcard Pokemon enhance creativity in team synergy and strategy?
  • Does gathering intelligence become more important or less important in the face of such a Pokemon?
  • Will prediction become a more subtle art in the presence of a wildcard -- i.e. not predicting based on the Pokemon or its set but based on the opponent's behavior itself?
  • Can such unpredictability enhance strategic and tactical play or will it force battlers to resort to brute force?
Explanation:
When you take any Pokemon, you can generally guess what kind of role it plays in an opponent's team. You see a Heatran, you can guess with near certainty that it's going to either sweep, status, tank, or revenge kill, all on the special side (barring explosion). Salamence is going to either tank or try to blow you to smithereens. So on and so forth. But what if you were to face something that was just as likely to P-Haze you, to blow up in your face, to set up entry hazards, to attempt a sweep, to status, to tank, to stall, to stall-break, or anything else you might dream of. There's really no way of knowing what this Pokemon is set out to do, and by the time you know, you've already given the opponent enough of a chance to gain an advantage over you. THIS is the kind of unpredictability I have in mind for this.

Now I also don't see this Pokemon dominating in any particular role (like it will not become a better special tank than Blissey). And I also don't see its unpredictability leading to the demise of half your opponent's team or anything drastic like that. Instead, (if you can excuse a chess analogy here) it would give you the advantage of being up a pawn. That is, you can gain a slight advantage in either battle momentum or net a kill or hamper a key opponent or assist a key player on your team. I see this Pokemon as something that can be used to easily gain a slight advantage but one that is slight enough that it will take a fair amount of skill to capitalize on it. Now this is all on the competitive side of things. I also want this to make it more fun for everyone. It's great to be able to do completely off the wall things with your Pokemon but still have it be effective.

As far as specific things that might work nicely with this, Multitype and Klutz are good bets.
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Jibaku and ReyScarface said:
Name: I HAVE FURY!

General Description: A Pokemon that, in one way or the other, takes advantage of the opponent's offensive strength

Justification: Most of the top threats in OU pack (extremely) high Attack and/or Special Attack, such as Salamence, Heatran, Latias, and Gyarados. This Pokemon's purpose is to take advantage of the centralization of the metagame in some way or the other (new niche in the metagame). The ultimate goal of this Pokemon is to decentralize the metagame (to an extent) as a byproduct as opposed to Arghonaut's immediate goal (positive effect). Keep in mind that it is not supposed to make the top Pokemon unusable, but to make them less favorable (we learn how the metagame works with these Pokemon being less dominant).

Questions to be answered:
- Is it possible for this Pokemon to not only decrease the usage percentage of the top few Pokemon, but also increase the ones at the middle/lower end of the usage list?
- How will we, when playing, keep this Pokemon from being too dominant in the metagame it is trying to decentralize?
- What negative side-effects are there from metagame decentralization?
- Will the metagame even decentralize??????
- Is this concept even possible?

Explanation: In my idea, this concept is represented as an ability that increases the Attack and/or Special Attack of the Pokemon based off the opponent's Attack, Special Attack (respectively), Speed, the highest base power in the moveset, and whether it receives STAB or not. If both the Pokemon's base Attack and Special Attack are equal or higher than its target, the ability will not activate.
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reachzero said:
Name: Utility Counter
General Description: This Pokemon is capable of being customized to counter virtually any specific Pokemon, but is incapable of countering a large number of Pokemon at the same time.
Justification: It is not unusual for people to say that "versatility is broken" from an offensive standpoint; less attention is given to versatile defensive Pokemon such as Zapdos or Hariyama. This Pokemon would allow us to study the impact of having a Pokemon that is capable of dealing with such varied threats as Salamence, Lucario, and Gengar....but not all at once.
Questions To Be Answered:
--How useful is defensive versatility in a metagame with so many different threats to account for?
--Given the existence of a Pokemon that can hard counter only specific major threats, which threats will be prepared for the most?
--How would team building change if certain difficult-to-prepare-for threats became easier to prepare for?
--Which is more useful, a Pokemon that can somewhat handle a wide range of threats, or a Pokemon that can handle a few threats extremely well?
Explanation: I envision this concept as looking like a more extreme version of Porygon2 or Hariyama; it can be custom designed to handle virtually any threat given the correct selection of EVs, moves, etc. However, in choosing to deal with certain threats almost flawlessly, it leaves itself open to other threats. Multitype would obviously make this concept's job much easier, though I doubt it is absolutely necessary to making it work.
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You should know exactly what it is you're voting for, so if you have any questions regarding a specific concept, you should PM the person who submitted it.

This poll will close on March 6th, 1:40 AM.
 
Vaz

Vaz

I HAVE FURY!

Hehe, I like the concept name, reminds me of Lord Fawful (My avatar).
I HAVE CHORTLES!! :D
 
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