Well, now... that's a lot of concepts, and no mistake. Quite a few of them have caught my eye, and annoyingly these may turn out to be harder to choose from than I first thought. Anyway:
This is certainly an interesting concept, and it has a lot of different avenues that we could explore. Truth be told, I'm not particularly fond of it because of its somewhat heavy reliance on abilities, and I'm always rather wary of any concept that prioritises any part of the process over the others. Still, as you have said, it is a challenge in itself to provide three isolated roles within fixed stats and movepool. My one concern is that most good abilities - those that would make a set - are not as specific to each role as would be ideal. As you said, Gyarados can use either Intimidate or Moxie on similar sets - and defensive abilities such as Natural Cure or Regenerator are just as viable on offensive as they are on defensive Pokemon. Having said that, this could be an opportunity to investigate less obvious abilities, and I can see plenty of ways this can work - I'd say that this is a solid concept at present.
Hmm. The difficulty with unpredictability in walls is that they are primarily designed to switch into something, which rather diminishes the whole surprise aspect - if, say, you have switched in an Alakazam, and your opponent switches in said unpredictable wall, you are within your rights to bet that it will be a special wall. Of course, you could bluff, that's true, but I'd have thought that the risk involved would make something like Chansey more worthwhile in that situation. Another concern is that the typing, whatever it might be, will almost always favour one of special or physical defence over the other - this is not guaranteed, I grant, but it is a problem nevertheless.
The thing is that I don't see how this can be achieved without custom abilities - this may be a good thing, as it really is forcing us to think creatively, and I'm not going to discount it purely because I can't see how it will work. Perhaps I'm just paranoid after what happened with Krilowatt - but then, that was quite a good process on the face of it.
Well, now. If I'm understanding this correctly, you are suggesting something like Slowking to check Keldeo, correct? When I read the Description, I immediately thought of Breloom and Scizor, but then again both of these have stand-out single qualities, such as access to both Technician and priority attacks. Regarding your example, it is probably largely Jellicent's unique typing - making it a spinblocker, check to a large number of Pokemon, etc - that makes it OU, although as you say, Scald, Taunt, and Recover all help. If it didn't have its Ghost-typing, it would be a worse Milotic - and bulky Ghosts are hard to come by.
I'm afraid I'm finding it hard to find any really good examples - Donphan is perhaps the only one I can really think of, but you said that you didn't want them to be "filling a role" as it were. I do think that this could merit some very interesting discussion, especially as the end product is not obvious by any stretch - my only qualm, as it were, is that Mollux turned out rather similar to this, in terms of being able to check top-tier threats, so I could see this as being a bit too like what we have just done. That's not grounds for disqualifying it, though.
I'm pretty sure that, um, most of the general attackers in OU are there because they function in all weathers - if any is severely compromised, it's likely not worth the bother in OU (obviously, stuff like Starmie is less effective in sun, but even so, most Dragons find it fairly easy to work in any weather). The only real way to make this interesting, as it were, would be to find some way of making a Pokemon that actually took advantage of all weathers, rather than just being good under them, but this may well be somewhat difficult, given that we only have 4 moveslots to work with.
I'm slightly confused by your explanation, as that seems to suggest a concept more orientated towards countering weather than towards being a part of it. Perhaps you could clarify that a tad.
An old but good idea. I'm not terribly keen on it myself, as I rather think that any Pokemon that isn't excellent at any one role is rather unlikely to succeed in the metagame - after all, Mew has 600 BST and can perform nearly every trick there is, yet is only barely OU. Jirachi, on the other hand, has roles that it can fill that no other Pokemon can. In any case, it's been well documented that this is a concept with a good deal of promise, and it's already very well fleshed out, so there's not much I can say beyond my usual reservations.
Well, this is new. I must say, this is a pretty interesting idea, and no mistake - particularly as it gives us leave to make that Forecast Pokemon we've always dreamed of. I can't say that I agree with your explanation where you necessitate the creation of new game mechanics to make this worthwhile - although if we do not, then our only ways of fulfilling this concept would be Forecast and Relic Song. This is unfortunate, and makes me not quite like this concept as much as I could do. There is very little challenge involved - we make a Pokemon with some means of changing forme in-battle and be done with it.
Now this is nifty. I heard a lot of talk on IRC about stuff like Perish Song Trappers, Wrap, and the like - while these would be a bit too limiting for my tastes, there is no doubt that this would make for a goodish Project with plenty of interesting discussion and dare I say not an undue number of avenues that could be explored. The possibilities are quite endless - my only moderate gripe is that, very possibly, whatever we decide to do will be very limiting, as we are going to have to restrict it to very definite roles, such as "Normal-type offence" or "Bulky Trapper" that aren't particularly deep concepts in and of themselves. On the other hand, the sheer number of ancient niches that exist - Parafusion, bulky set-up (Curselax and CroCune spring to mind), Toxic-stallers, pure support, even Trick Room to an extent - not to mention the revival of some old niches already in BW (Reuniclus with bulky set-up alongside Psychic-type offence). I really like this, but at the same time I'm wary of how many directions it could go in.
M'yes. The thing is, though, that banning is and always will be very subjective - there is no easy definition. There are plenty of borderline cases - see Garchomp and Excadrill, for example - but I think there are very few absolute clear-cut cases (the only ones I can really think of are RBY Mewtwo and DPP LC Scyther). The idea of "banning because broken" is not necessary synonymous with "banning because we want a balanced metagame". I'm not fond of this concept, not because there's no challenge involved (because there certainly is), but because there's no definite end goal in sight. And that's a problem when everyone has differing ideas about what is too powerful and what isn't. For example, I believe that Garchomp was banned in DPP purely because it was very good, rather than because it was broken. But not everyone would agree with that. "Overcentralising" I believe was phased out a while ago - it was used as justification for Garchomp's ban, and BW is rather alarmingly centralised around only a few playstyles. That doesn't make it bad, of course.
All in all, I think that the concept as it stands has the distinct possibility to cause far too much drama for far too little reward. If you were to change it to emphasise the defensive aspect - it is certainly not known whether it is possible for a Pokemon to be defensively overpowering, as you said - then I would be far more willing to consider it.
Fidgit MkII, if I'm not mistaken. We haven't tried our hand at a primarily support-based or defensive Pokemon for a while now, so I'm rather interested in this concept. The offensive bias you mentioned is an interesting touch, although that would make it rather similar to most of our recent Pokemon - on the plus side, though, a truly flexible supporter would be a goodish challenge, so that's something.
Rather bare-bones concept, but even so, it's a very imaginative idea, especially for the purpose in investigating the psychological aspect of Pokemon, which I have always been rather interested in. The downside is, though, that the concept isn't really challenging enough for my taste - the end product is almost defined by the concept itself ("different formes with different stats that look alike") so as far as achieving the concept goes, there's not much to do. I do very much like the idea, though.
Interestingly, the first thing I thought when I saw your concept was "150 base HP Final Gambit". I can see this working as the sort of Pokemon that has a dozen effective but gimmicky sets, which would work sometimes but not always. Lures are another good example you gave - I do indeed like this idea, as there are indeed very many ways you could go with this and the build would be pretty challenging, especially as you would have to ensure that there would be no clear-cut standard sets all the way through. I fear, though, that having to keep our eyes on potential sets for the entirety of the Project would give way to poll-jumping, and that building a Pokemon around sets rather than sets around a Pokemon would rather jeopardise the process. In any case, though, I do like it.
Quickstall, eh? Can't say I've ever used it myself, but it sounds like an intriguing prospect. The difficulty I have with these "playstyle in one Pokemon" concepts is that they very rarely seem to, well, account for the other team members. I'm not sure what one Pokemon can do to make this playstyle viable and in any case I'm not sure how many people in the CAP community would be acquainted with the playstyle in any case. On the other hand, I suppose that Whimsicott and Jumpluff still exist, and there's no shortage of bulky fast stuff here and there. I'd like to see some of your own ideas for how this could work in the "Explanation" section before I pass any sort of judgement.
Direct and to the point, I see. The difficulty with your idea is that, well, the sweepers on rain teams (that is to say, the Water-types) will typically have great difficulty with other rain teams, meaning that anything that can single-handedly dismantle an opposing rain team is pretty, well, greatly sought-after, assuming of course that there are no custom abilities or moves involved. Mollux was a little too close to this concept for me, unfortunately. It's an interesting idea, though.
Here's a concept that I think a lot of people have been going after. It's certainly a challenge to build and I think it's safe to say that it would be a pretty huge discussion topic, especially as this Pokemon would be designed to single-handedly turn the BW2 metagame on its head, effectively. The idea itself is good, and pertinent to today's metagame, certainly.
Another variant on the unpredictability and mindgames theme. I do have a soft spot for these, I must admit; I also think this is one of the less complex and therefore more easily approached concepts that I have seen. I'm not sure I'm quite as fond of this as I am of other concepts of a similar ilk, since there are very few ways you can take this concept - you could have two separate abilities, perhaps an imaginative set of egg move illegalities, but what apart from that? I feel like the scope of this concept is just a bit too narrow, unfortunately.
I liked this last CAP and I still like it a lot. Of course, it's not the same as last time (concealed information over surprise), but it's still a worthwhile subject. Suffice to say that the element of surprise is something that we have never really explored terribly in CAP (as opposed to "unpredictability"), there are plenty of ways to achieve it, and that there is plenty of discussion to be had and obstacles to overcome. I would emphasise the idea of surprise over unpredictability, perhaps, but other than that I really like this concept.
Taking an Uber down a notch
I very much doubt that one, probably very specialised Pokemon would be sufficient to make an Uber no longer broken (after all, Gastrodon is a pretty good Kyogre check). This is certainly an interesting idea, but I'm not exactly sure how it would work in practice. I'll grant that I would like to try it out, though.
/Voodoom
In all seriousness, a Pokemon that makes more than one core is certainly an interesting prospect, but I do wonder how different it would really be to what we have already done. Cores are all very well, but they are either very hard or very easy to deliberately design a Pokemon for, depending on the approach taken. I'm not fond of this concept, sorry.
Aha, high-risk-high-reward. This is a very deep concept, I think - and for that reason, I like it rather more than I have similar concepts in the past, particularly because of the emphasis on the user rather than on the Pokemon. There are plenty of avenues to explore, too - whether we decide to go for a Stealth Rock weak monster like Volcarona or a glass cannon like Alakazam. All in all, there's not much I don't like about this.
Well, given the addition of new offensive threats to the metagame, I'd say that of all the different "playstyle" concepts, this is the most realistic. I'm still not sure about this concept, largely because there isn't really a distinct end goal in sight beyond "something that works in hyper offence", and hence a large part of the challenge of the process is removed entirely.
I've said I wasn't fond of "Break the Mould" style concepts, though this one would promise some interesting discussion. I am still not keen on it purely because it focuses to too great an extent on the ability and moves, and there is no real end goal based on the concept itself.
As the lead metagame goes, any sort of lead has to be able to give its user a very definite advantage over the opponent. This means that, well, an offensive lead is almost entirely ruled out given the capacity of the opponent to choose their lead, which only leaves hazard leads, which Deoxys-D already does pretty well. I can't see this being a particularly interesting process, sorry - there are far too few avenues we could potentially go down.
Mmm. EVO wasn't exactly a rousing success and there are many reasons why we have never tried to "update" the CAPs - although, your idea is rather intriguing, I have to say. I'm not sure what unique niches we could get from this that we couldn't get from elsewhere, and I'm not sure where the challenge comes from without a definite end-goal, once we have picked whatever Pokemon we want to be recreating.
This concept confuses me. On the one hand, we have "A Pokemon who has all the right tools to thrive with a lackluster or hindering ability", the classic Skill Swap Slaking affair. On the other hand, you then go on to say that "This concept focuses on taking an underappreciated or unwanted ability to its fullest potential", which is much closer to Cyclohm. I'm not sure I see the potential of either of these at present, so I'd like to ask you to clarify exactly what your concept is proposing.
I very much doubt that the concept is that feasible, as even Wobbuffet, a Pokemon with only 8 moves to choose from, can run different sets (yeah I know Ditto exists but). In addition, there isn't really a definable end goal in place, though you could easily make the argument that there is, so I'll be willing to overlook that. That's the only beef I have with it, though - aside from that, the concept is very solid indeed and could merit some interesting discussion.
Uhh I'm pretty sure this concept is illegal as it sort of necessitates a custom move, ability, etc. - unless of course I am misunderstanding this, in which case feel free to correct me.
Sun bunching in on Hail's monopoly, I see. I like how many ways this could go, in that this Pokemon could purely be a counter to rain or sand teams, or be a huge player on sun or hail teams, or even all of these at the same time. Either way, there are a lot of ways to go about this, and I like it more than most of the other weather concepts.
As AG said, the concept is really limiting - there are so few ways to take advantage of gender that there really isn't much point in trying to make a Pokemon that will base its existence on gender, without creating a custom ability or otherwise.
To address your question, yes, we have created custom moves in the past (never items) but we will ONLY ever do it as a last resort, or when there are no other options (or if enough people vote for it, as we are a democratic institution).
TO address your concept, it seems rather similar to that of Colossoil, but you've been a bit too specific with it. There's no possible way to make it immune to all indirect damage without Magic Guard, and no way to make it immune to all stat drops without Clear Body/White Smoke, and no way to make it immune to all status conditions without... well, you get the idea. Essentially your concept is too prescriptive in its current form.
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Those are my current thoughts on all posted concepts. I have tried to be as fair and objective as possible in evaluating them for potential, and you may well disagree with me - in fact I invite you to address any criticisms I may have made and convince me that my fears are unfounded and your concept is the best thing since sliced bread. I am, as they say, all ears, and my slate is not nearly set in stone yet.
Speaking of the slate, I'd like to get a good number of different options on the table for the first poll. In any case, of the thirty or so concepts currently submitted, I have whittled them down to 10 for the my first shortlist. Feel free to comment on the list or explain why you should be on it, but kindly do not disparage the submissions of others.
Code:
Three Ways to Play
Unpredictable Wall
Ugly Duckling
Time Capsule
Dare To Be Different
The Weather Killer
Deceiver
Living On the Edge
One Trick Pony
Weather Equaliser
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Well, that took a lot more time than I would have expected, so I'm going to go rest my arms for a bit. Cheerio.
