Policy Review Policy Review: The Future of the CAP Metagame

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Birkal

Birkal

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Hello! Many of you PRC members know that the ideas presented in this topic have been a long time in the making. Now that CAP3 is off to a good start, I feel comfortable in opening up the future of the CAP metagame for discussion. I'd like to propose to all of you the potential vision of what this metagame could be.

I'm here to propose what could almost be considered an entirely new project. For the sake of this topic, let's call it the 'CAP Metagame Project'. Since the end of the fourth generation and the switch to Pokemon Online, the CAP metagame has almost been completely blown off the face of the earth, hardly anyone played it. However, now that we've found a home in Pokemon Showdown!, interest in the CAP metagame is increasing once again. There are a few ways that we could respond to this sudden peak in interest. Let me illustrate my vision:

  • I'd like to establish specific learning goals for the CAP metagame. Let me be blunt: there is plenty that can be learned from tinkering with a metagame. The CAP metagame gives us ample opportunity to test shifts in a metagame. When a new CAP is released, the CAP metagame is usually in an uproar over how to respond to the new threat. This is uncannily similar to the shift of Pokemon from Dream World to OU. By testing and discussing this phenomenon, we can gain further insight on how new threats change and sway a metagame. We can also provide learning points that benefit the rest of Smogon through our research!

  • I'd also like to see a CAP Metagame subforum. Once we have established rules and discussion points that we'll be focusing on, we're going to need a place to discuss the metagame! We have a bunch of options. We could a) simply use the CAP main forum, b) create a new subforum in CAP, or c) attempt to get a CAP metagame subforum in Dragonspiral Tower. I'll be honest with you, I'm vying for Option C. DST is highly populated and will increase interest in the metagame. It would also provide more general interest in CAP and get more Smogon community members involved in our progress. If we were to go with Option C, however, we'd need to clearly define our goals so that we provide worth to DST. I'm not worried about this, we just need to be clear about our thoughts and ideas. In short, we need to decide where discussion for this metagame will take place.

  • I'd like to open past CAPs up for revisions in this new metagame. I know by saying this, I've opened up a huge can of worms. However, this is something that needs to be discussed, and this topic seems like a good place to talk about it. Arguments in the past against revising CAPs is that they are a testament to their concept and changing them could almost be insulting. However, it saddens me to see these CAPs "not get used" anymore for a purpose in CAP. Letting them fight again within the CAP metagame gives them purpose. Tinkering with their movepools and abilities can further help us establish our goals within the CAP metagame. Furthermore, past CAPs have their "testimony" in both the CAP Process Archive and the current CAP site. We could even create a "Past CAP Encyclopedia" to make sure their meaning is not lost. In terms of this point, we need to discuss if we're going to allow revisions or not. And if we are going to allow them, how liberal should we be with them?


Those are my thoughts for now. There are many other facets of this, like perhaps establishing a CAP council, deciding on how revisions will be dealt with, and other parts. Please don't discuss those now! Those will all come in future topics. The CAP Metagame Project will be a multi-topic PRC conversation, so get prepared for more of these. In short, I'm looking to discuss these questions within this topic:

  • Should we establish a CAP Metagame Project? Do we want to actively seek learning on how metagame shifts work by analyzing the effects of new CAPs (and possibly revisions of old CAPs) or would we rather leave the CAP metagame as something we do 'for fun'?
  • Where should we discuss the CAP Metagame Project? CAP main forum? CAP subforum? Potentially DST? Do you have some other idea?
  • Should we allow revisions? If so, what advantages do they present? How liberally should we give them? If we shouldn't allow them, why not?
 
Well, I guess I will just give my opinions on those three points.

Birkal said:
Should we establish a CAP Metagame Project? Do we want to actively seek learning on how metagame shifts work by analyzing the effects of new CAPs (and possibly revisions of old CAPs) or would we rather leave the CAP metagame as something we do 'for fun'?
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So, do we want to have the metagame be a project, or just for fun? I think either way of doing it would be perfectly fine. I certainly wouldn't mind if we decided that it would just be there for fun and not anything more. However, I certainly believe that there is a lot that can be learned by tinkering with the metagame. So, while I am not against leaving it be, I think such a project is a very good idea, and definitely worth pursuing.

For the rest of this post I am pretty much going to assume that this is being done as a competitive project, and not just for fun, but unless something is only possible for one or the other (such as a DST sub forum), my opinions would stay the same either way.
Where should we discuss the CAP Metagame Project? CAP main forum? CAP subforum? Potentially DST? Do you have some other idea?
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So, assuming we do go through with this project, having a place for it is important, and a can see value in each of the three proposed places.

Giving it a sub forum in CAP is probably the most natural thing, and would give it a place to expand and grow freely while keeping it linked to the rest of CAP. However, there is really no other advantages to it beyond that. It makes sense, but it won't provide any other benefits over the other two.

Now, if we are able to get it a place in DST, that would probably be more advantageous, as it would provide many of the same benefits of a CAP sub forum, but trading direct CAP connection for a much greater traffic influx. I believe that this would certainly be worth the exchange, as getting more people to participate in CAP is one of the most important things we will need to do for a project like this to work.

However, having this project directly in the CAP forum itself might be even better. While it might not provide the same traffic as DST, having it out and in the open in CAP, especially when a CAP project is going on will provide plenty of exposure for the project. Additionally, it keeps it front and center with relation to CAP as a whole and helps add more active threads to the forum, something we have been working on improving. I actually believe this to be slightly more beneficial that what would be gained from putting it in DST. Yet, unlike the other two, this also has much larger downsides. Specifically, if the project gets rather large with many threads, it risks crowding the CAP forum, which will not only be annoying for people who are not interested in the metagame project, but may also make the forum less friendly to new users, which is definitely not something we want.

Personally, while I think they all have their good points, I believe getting a place over in Dragonspiral Tower would probably be the best thing for this project.
Should we allow revisions? If so, what advantages do they present? How liberally should we give them? If we shouldn't allow them, why not?
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And finally, here we are with the big one. Revisions.

I'll be completely honest here, I am not a huge fan of revisions for competitive reasons. Now, as I have said many times before, I would be all for flavor updates for 4th gen CAPs. As CAP is now a 5th gen metagame, leaving 4th gen Pokemon exactly as they were is just odd. I don't think anything major or competitive needs to be done with this, but If we are going to let them play in 5th gen, we should give them the same things all 4th gen Pokemon got during the gen shift.

In addition, there may be some extreme cases where other revisions may be necessary. If a CAP pokemon were to be deemed broken in the CAP metagame, I would support making very minor changes instead of banning them as a normal tier would. Since CAP is the only tier where these Pokemon are legal, banning them would render them completely unusable, which we want to avoid, so preventing that from happening is of utmost importance.

However, that is about the extent to which I am willing to support revisions. I am especially against the idea of revising a CAP to make it better because it is not used in the metagame. While keeping them legal is fine, editing them to essentially manipulate the usage stats is not. If a CAP is not good, then they are just not good. Changing them to make them better really does not show us anything. But even more importantly, we need to remember that the metagame will be getting a new major threat every few months. For all we know, the presence of a new threat that an old CAP can counter might be just what it needs to become useful again. If we are constantly making changes to old Pokemon to make them better, than we may miss this major effect that a new Pokemon can have on a metagame. Personally, I think that effects like this should be one of the main focuses of this project, and any changes that would prevent us from observing them would completely defeat the purpose.
 
I'm going to answer these questions you posed at the end with my personal opinion.

Should we establish a CAP Metagame Project? Do we want to actively seek learning on how metagame shifts work by analyzing the effects of new CAPs (and possibly revisions of old CAPs) or would we rather leave the CAP metagame as something we do 'for fun'?

I personally believe that we could learn something from engaging in the CAP metagame. It would be like experimenting with unreleased Dream World Pokemon, or even a generation shift if we include revisions of old Pokemon. Learning how to react to something as violent as the sudden changes of a generation shift can help us ease into new metagames much more easily, preventing things from getting as chaotic as the beginning of the BW metagame.

Where should we discuss the CAP Metagame Project? CAP main forum? CAP subforum? Potentially DST? Do you have some other idea?

I believe that the CAP metagame project should be mostly in the CAP subforum, but with DST recognition as a true *regulated* metagame. This is purely to establish it as a respected "tier" and for it to gain recognition from users who have previously ignored the entirety of the CAP process due to it being less active and more planning. It would allow users to present themselves in the forms of new RMTs, war stories, and other various mediums that would allow us to learn how the metagame evolves and changes.

Should we allow revisions? If so, what advantages do they present? How liberally should we give them? If we shouldn't allow them, why not?

I believe we should allow revisions under the guise of a generation shift. That is my only opinion on this matter.
 
Hm, I'd have expected more activity in this topic. Oh well, maybe it'll pick up a bit now.

Birkal said:
  • Should we establish a CAP Metagame Project? Do we want to actively seek learning on how metagame shifts work by analyzing the effects of new CAPs (and possibly revisions of old CAPs) or would we rather leave the CAP metagame as something we do 'for fun'?
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I'd support an attempt to go about trying to learn something from the CAP metagame; for my own part, I'd be fascinated by it. The idea of examining how a metagame shifts with the influx of new threats is certainly interesting, but more importantly, we can see how well our creations perform their designated roles when not in an environment we designed them for. However, the difficulty comes in actually trying to set this up. How exactly are we going to investigate this metagame? Are we just going to set up a discussion thread, or are we going to be creating some forum-wide projects to supplement them, a la the ones in Dragonspiral Tower (I've heard of them but I don't go there often, so I don't actually know how effective they are or what they actually do)? And more importantly, when exactly do these run? If they are done in the main CAP forum and not in a separate subforum, or even if it is in a separate subforum, how will it be reconciled with the project proper, if those who are most likely to take an active part are busy with the project, or with Policy Review?

Such problems make setting up the CAP Metagame to be a serious project in its own right... well, problematic. I do want to make one point here though. I think that one of the biggest things we can learn from some such project is, as I said before, how our creations fare outside of their comfort zone, as it were; it is almost modelling a generation shift. If these are to be a focus, then I would reject any suggestion of updating previous CAPs, as this screws over the idea of seeing how well they fare without further input. Amongst other things. See third point.

  • Where should we discuss the CAP Metagame Project? CAP main forum? CAP subforum? Potentially DST? Do you have some other idea?
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I am relatively certain that nobody in DST would agree to host a CAP metagame section (though they do have Dream World, so eh), or at least that's what I gathered from seeing the topic brought up in IS. Even if it were amenable to all concerned, I would still oppose a move on the grounds that we shouldn't be trying to split up the CAP community if we can help it; also that the metagame should remain as strongly linked to the project proper as possible. However, I still think that sticking it in the main forum is a bad idea, as stickies could get a bit cluttered, like in DST, and if we have to implement those thread category things I swear to God I will be annoyed... more than I usually am. Not to mention that an overlap with the CAP Project would probably be asking for trouble. So, a new subforum is probably the best idea.

  • Should we allow revisions? If so, what advantages do they present? How liberally should we give them? If we shouldn't allow them, why not?
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No. I'm fairly sure jas has already covered my thoughts on the matter already, but I'll make it clear just to be sure. There are a number of reasons why revisions are a bad idea, the first of which is purely practical - is there any "fair" way to go about doing them? It's pretty clear that there is no way to make all of the CAPs totally successful in the metagame - for every one we "help", another one slips down. It's not quite as bad as if we were directly making CAPs for the CAP metagame, but it's still not really feasible as an ongoing process. If we're trying to make all CAPs viable, then a) we're not really learning anything besides "more stuff makes things more powerful" and b) we're sort of abusing the process in a way, because we're deliberately altering CAPs for seemingly no purpose other than to raise their usage stats. Oh, and as I said above, they also hinder what I would like to see as a core learning objective of the CAP Metagame Project, should it ever come into existence.

As for flavour updates... I could live with those, but I'd only be fully comfortable with them once the site is ready to have separate pages for generations. Thus we can preserve our Gen IV pages and bring the CAPs forward without worrying. If we can't, then it becomes difficult to find a place to ge this information on-site.

That's all I've got time for at the moment. If I can think of any suggestions to answer the questions I've posed I'll post accordingly; in the meantime I'd like to hear the opinions of the de facto leaders of the metagame on this.
 
Bumping this thread. Discussion absolutely exploded in #cap today, which genuinely shocked me. I had taken the silence presented here by the PRC as "we have no objections to post about". If you have such strong objections to revisions of past CAPs (or any thoughts on the CAP metagame), post them now. This thread will be closing within the next few days and a decision will be made and/or voted upon.
 
Posting this for HD, who was once a past PRC member on numerous occassions. He's a standing member of the CAP community and has some strong opinions on this topic. His thoughts are clearly presented, so I don't feel guilty in posting his thoughts here, despite the fact that he is not currently a PRC member.


HD said:
No promises on quality will be made.

A lot of people on #cap know who strongly I feel (oppose) any decision where we revise and advance or just even advance the generation four CaPs to generation five.

My reasoning is simple: generation four CaPs were created with the sole purpose of learning about the generation four OU metagame (in case you were not able to tell from their title). This, quite simply, means they were made in generation four, for generation four. They were not made with the generation five metagame in mind (as evidenced by their title, generation four CaPs). Thus, the CaP metagame they inhabit was also made based off of the generation four metagame - which, again, is quite different from the generation five metagame.

It would be unethical to desecrate the past by advancing the generation four CaPs. Birkal (who will maybe post this post for me) mentioned that we are leaving the CaPs to rot. However, I firmly believe this is not the case. We are not forgetting about the generation four CaPs, we are archiving them for future study. It isn't like we're closing the book forever, we have just learned all that we can from those CaPs for that metagame - they are ready to rest.

Note that while I am strongly opposed to advancing generation four CaPs, I am strongly in favor (MY STRENGTH IS WITHOUT BOUNDS) of reusing the old CaP concepts. Reusing the CaP concepts would teach us much, much more than simply advancing the CaP. We would be able to compare how we execute the concept under the new setting of generation five to how we executed the concept previously. This teaches us the specific changes in the metagame, as well as how to adapt to them (Will Fidgit keep his Poison-typing? Will Arghonaut still be as strong at stopping carries?). Advancing the CaPs teaches us how they are changed - but the real meat of the CaPs is their concept.

Also, keep in mind the physical restraints on this project. Accepting this proposal would require a great deal of time to be spent updating every CaP every time a major change is released into the metagame. As we got more and more CaPs, it would eventually take more time to actually revise them then to make a new CaP. Not forgetting the man power - notice how there are so many people on #cap with opinions to share, but how few of them are part of the PRC. How many people say they are of a certain religion and are ready to defend their choice to the death, and how many of them actually go regularly to the sermons or meetings? This group (both, actually) includes myself, of course.

In conclusion, I feel that advancing the CaPs isn't just a bad choice, but unethical as well. They are done, but the information in them lives on, and the idea behind their birth is available to be used at any time, with more benefits than just moving the entire Pokemon up a generation.
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CAPs should never again be revised.

I have many reasons for feeling the way that I do, and so how I will present this post is as a series of paragraphs each with a bolded headline sentence. This sentence will give my reason, and the rest of the paragraph will provide support for that particular reason. As the person who lead the reversions, which undid all of the crap that previous revisions broke and toned back movepools to fit with guidelines we implemented around the time of Voodoom, I believe I have unique experience that makes what I have to say here very relevant to the discussion. I did this reversion thing once, and I don't think it would be wise to ever do it again. Let me explain to you why.

CAPs are a testament to the process that created them and reflect it thoroughly. Changing them as an afterthought removes that relevance, and effectively removes any historical significance of the CAP. CAP is all about the process that made them; that is the ultimate goal of the project. Interesting discussions matter more than creating a cool Pokemon. It has always been that way, and so long as I have a say will hopefully always remain that way. These processes have very unique results, such as why an ability set was chosen, or why a Pokemon who might normally get Will-O-Wisp doesn't get it (Revenankh), or why a Pokemon who might normally never get a signature move does get it (Heart Swap Krilowatt / Horn Leech Necturna). There are many instances where newer users, or users who aren't necessarily new but aren't necessarily aware of all of the intricacies of these ancient CAP projects, will change these details without a second thought. This has happened in the past with revisions, and even with careful foresight could happen again in any countless number of ways. For instance, revising the DPP CAPs for BW may result in them getting moves such as Volt Switch on Krilowatt which seem obvious to a typical BW OU player but may oppose the logic of the processes that created them. This is relevant in many ways with many new moves, new TMs, and new abilities that a CAP could get. Revisions in this sense should not happen in order to preserve the historical significance of the CAPs, much like how we as a society do not change art masterpieces in a museum to fit in with newer art.

Decisions made in CAP projects are serious competitive decisions that, without revisions, reflect how that CAP will always be. We, as a community, should not take our decisions lightly when we create a new Pokemon. When we choose a Pokemon's ability or stats, we need to be thinking of the significance of those decisions. If revisions exist that can theoretically change any aspect of a CAP, these decisions lose significance and users submitting for CAP projects will note to themselves that "If this is broken in OU or a bad decision, we can always remove it later!" They will not take it as seriously as they should. A good example of this is Krilowatt with Magic Guard. Many users voted in Magic Guard because "YEAH MAGIC GUARD" without thinking. If we, in retrospect, removed Magic Guard because we think it doesn't fit the concept, we are essentially fixing the mistakes made by the past communities, ignoring the learned significance of those mistakes, and telling future CAP members that "It's okay to not take your submissions seriously since you can always change it in a later revision." I do not think that creates an appropriate environment for our community to create Pokemon. We should develop Pokemon with the understanding that we are making history and will have to deal with our successes or failures appropriately in both the playtest and the resulting CAP metagame.

Revisions are immensely time-consuming, and it'll only get worse. There are many side projects that CAP has decided that it wants to do. Most eminent among these is wanting to flesh out past DPP CAP pre-evos so that we can have complete flavor objects for them. We recently added pre-evo process events to the main CAP process as well to flesh these things out for future CAPs, too. Revising the CAPs to constantly keep the CAP metagame as balanced as possible is an exponentially explosive time investment. I say this because every time a new game is released, or every time a new CAP is made, revisions will need to be made to handle what those additions bring to the table and balance things out. This gets to be more and more and more work the more CAPs we have. Revisions were a quaint idea when we had 5 CAPs, tackle-able when we had 10, but have quickly become an unwieldy time investment. We're soon to have 14 CAPs, and we will have many more as time goes on. You may argue that "If people are willing to do it, then why stop them?" and while that is a fair point, I think there are more exciting things we could sell people on, such as hosting CAPs in different tiers, hosting dual-CAPs where multiple CAPs are developed at once in tandem, and so forth.

Revisions, if done, must be done by more than just a few users on a council. CAP differs from OU and other council-lead tiers in that it is entirely a community project and if we're going to drastically change one or more of the CAPs, the community should absolutely be involved. However, the community cannot be trusted with these decisions. The community cannot conceivably factor in all of the things that change when you adjust all CAPs to be competitively viable in the CAP metagame. There are so many factors to consider, and not even our best players can delineate them all adequately for proper addressing. This gets even worse when we create more CAPs, becoming even more difficult to handle in the situations I described for the logic in my previous paragraph. Furthermore, the council idea is fundamentally flawed because CAP is a community project before everything else; taking away the ability for every CAP user to contribute to the revisions is fundamentally very wrong. This issue is compounded because everyone will have different ideas for how to solve the problems encountered by CAPs in the CAP metagame, and made even worse again by not everyone agreeing in the first place on what the problems are to begin with. What is being proposed here by revisions is something that I consider to not be feasible to start with. It is, essentially, Pandora's Box and will only result in the CAP metagame becoming even more inaccessible for users because of how complex it will be in constantly changing. Even changing just a few things every once in awhile, such as with a generation or new game shift, makes the game less accessible to users. This is something we should strive to avoid.

These are my biggest reasons for opposing revisions, and hopefully I have explained myself in a way that makes it clear why what I have presented above is indeed a problem for the CAP project should be pursue revisions further.
 
First of all, I am absolutely in favour of having threads discussing the CAP metagame. I'm all for having DST-style discussions on CAP. However, I think that the CAP metagame discussions should "prove" themselves before getting a subforum. The fear I have with getting a subforum in CAP or DST is that it will become both deserted and relatively hidden from people interested in CAP. The situation may be that a poster wants to talk about the CAP metagame, but can't in the CAP main forum and has to put in that effort to peep at the subforum, find it possibly devoid of activity, and give up. If discussion threads about the CAP metagame in the main forum are enough to choke out the main CAP projects, THEN we should consider making a subforum for them. If we're not discussing the CAP metagame here, what hope do we really have in discussing it elsewhere?

The other fear I have, particularly concerning efforts to get people to talk about CAP in #pokemon, is that people who are established in CAP and nowhere else may become marginalized and alienated. I recall aldaron offering incentives for the purpose of having more CAP discussion in #pokemon, and on the surface that is certainly good for exposure to the rest of Smogon IRC. However, I got uneasy knowing that there were people in #cap who would have no idea that discussion about CAP was taking place, and that even if they did, they may not actually want to participate in #pokemon. It just seems rather counterproductive and outright strange. I think that this aspect should be reconsidered.

All that said, I do appreciate that people outside of CAP would like to see CAP and the CAP metagame get more exposure. For now, I think that a redirect to the main forum in DST (and possibly another to the analysis workshop in C&C) would be the best current solution.

Regarding revisions, I am largely against them. jas's argument against Multitype for CAP 2 comes to mind; if we revised the CAPs, we would risk putting undue emphasis on the CAPs rather than the actual metagame, and then all our efforts would have to be re-examined every time a new CAP entered the fray. If there were a fast, mechanical way to implement minimal, "obvious", flavour-based updates, then maybe that could be feasible, but I don't see that happening right now. I would rather implement temporary bans than revise the CAPs, though even that seems like a somewhat futile effort considering the next CAP around could change everything each time. The rest of Smogon has shown to me that engineering a metagame is an incredibly messy, complicated process where a lot of people with decidedly subjective reasoning for their views butt heads and call each other idiots and come to no completely satisfactory resolution. I think our focus should be on analyzing the metagame that the main CAP building process dumps on us.
 
Posting this for Verbatim, who has been an excellent member of the CAP community and has played a huge role in our integration to Pokemon Showdown!:


verbatim said:
Should we allow revisions? If so, what advantages do they present? How liberally should we give them? If we shouldn't allow them, why not?

It is my opinion that we should be looking more at updating the older pokemon to the fifth generation. If we want to use this as a method of revising a pokemon's role then so be it.


With the sole exception of Unknown their no precedent of a pokemon remaining completely the same in both generation 4 and generation 5. Every other single pokemon has either gained a hidden ability and/or new moves via changes to egg moves, TM's, HM's, level up moves, and event moves.


Insofar as CAP goes their is also precedent for updating pokemon to new games. With the release of Platinum CAP pokemon Fidgit was updated to take advantage of the newly released elemental punches tutors.

I believe that the biggest issue with updating a CAP is the issue of decision, each and every CAP pokemon's abilities, egg illegalities, etc, was made with the purpose of balancing a pokemon and as such, if we want to change how they function, we need to take caution. It is for that reason that I suggest updating 4th generation CAP pokemon's moves list to include 5th generation TM's and HM's.

I am currently on the fence about weather or not I like any of the other changes; (such as adding Hidden Powers and new egg moves) the primary reasons that I am backing updating HM's and TM's are that it follows the precedent set by Gamefreak and that none of the old CAP pokemon will be seriously changed by the introduction of the new moves. The three "questionable" moves obtained from tm's, (Scald, Volt Switch, and Dragon Tail) are all powerful moves that are seen throughout OU, but none are strong enough to change how a CAP pokemon is used to the point that it no longer resembles the original concept. At the end of the day Volt Switch (or Dragon Tail for that matter) Cyclohm is still an "unusual dragon with physical defense and special offense", Scald Krilowatt is still a "situational counter for a variety of common threats".
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• Should we establish a CAP Metagame Project? Do we want to actively seek learning on how metagame shifts work by analyzing the effects of new CAPs (and possibly revisions of old CAPs) or would we rather leave the CAP metagame as something we do 'for fun'?

• Where should we discuss the CAP Metagame Project? CAP main forum? CAP subforum? Potentially DST? Do you have some other idea?

• Should we allow revisions? If so, what advantages do they present? How liberally should we give them? If we shouldn't allow them, why not?

I think a new CaP meta (Which is OU + All CaPs) could be an interesting metagame, but it would definitely need to follow the normal OU banlists. I think that CaP updates to Gen4 CaPs should be done just as GF updates their Pokémon with each generation. To this end, look at Voodoom... GF updated Lightning Rod which made it (the ability) a lot better than it was before. Voodoom kept that update... Why? If NO REVISIONS are allowed in CaP, why has Voodoom got an updated ability?

As what was discussed in IRC a week or so ago... In my opinion, if Gen 4 CaPs are not updated to Gen5, they should be banned from being used in Gen5 OUCaP. As far as I am aware, no Pokémon outside of the Unown/Smeargle/Wobbuffet/Magikarp stuff has not received a new move in some way. Why should the Gen4 Caps be any different to regular Pokémon in that regard? Gen4 Caps should be updated to have *some* new moves. Hell, the Gen5 CaPs have Dream World abilities (apart from levitators and some others), which the Gen4 CaPs do not. BW OU has to re-evaluate every time a new DW ability which affects the metagame is released. Look at the shake-up Ditto is going to give when it is legal...

We have the ability to learn a LOT of things with adding the new moves to the old CaPs... We could see how Volt Switch affects Cyclohm, or how Scald changes Krilowatt. Ofcourse, these revisions should be done extremely carefully. And not just slapped onto random things. These revisions should NOT be frequent at ALL. Frequent updates would lead to a topsy turvy metagame. The main reason I say this is because that people DO NOT VOTE FOR OLD CONCEPTS. Yes, old concepts are allowed to be revisited but no one will vote for them “because they have been done before”. I point to BTM2 that was suggested for CaP3, it got shot apart by people saying it was too similar to what we had done with Stratagem.

Just how several Pokémon who are now top of OU (mainly Politoed) gained something enormous as it moved into Gen5, why can we not examine how the Gen 4 CaPs change in how they play in the Gen5 Metagame with the addition of a few moves (and possibly abilities)? I understand that they are history and they should be left unchanged. If we had the ability to have Gen4 and Gen5 analysis' for the Pokémon it would be much easier to keep track of what has and hasn't changed...

CaP Metagame discussion should stay here imo... CaP itself is a fairly niche interest at the best of times. I don’t think it would get any recognition by Smogon elitists anyway.

TL;DR:

CaP Metagame should happen along the same lines and banlists as BWOU. If revisions (just as simply as adding moves) to 4th Gen CaPs are not allowed, then they should be outright banned from the metagame as they “are no longer relevant”. Being banned is the only logical conclusion to the arguments presented.

Not happy with how this post came out but oh well :/
 
In light of that post, I am bringing this up again:

If there were a fast, mechanical way to implement minimal, "obvious", flavour-based updates, then maybe that could be feasible, but I don't see that happening right now.
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An argument could be made (and has been made just above me) for minimal/"obvious" flavour-based updates. Namely, the absence of a move (or whatever) could be seen as an aspect of a CAP, just as the presence of a move (or whatever) is seen as an aspect of a CAP; yet, we never explicitly decided whether, for example, Krilowatt should or should not have Volt Switch, or whether or not Voodoom should benefit from the SpA raise of this generation's Lightningrod. The idea of removing accidental illegality fixes has also been thrown around.

Right now, I think that the benefit of doing all this (especially the "removing accidental illegality fixes" bit) is far eclipsed by the effort required. I don't see what the big deal is (requiring a whole project to do) if something that requires an hour of slave labour results in Pyroak not having DragonBreath or something. I also fear that even the little things might actually put CAPs in a sort of flux because of some people being inevitably unsatisfied with how far we have taken the minimal/"obvious" updates. People seem to think that these updates will be a piece of cake, but that's because their plan is all in their heads, with no criticism from each other. We shouldn't expect plans like this to work out perfectly. The potential disagreements, on top of all the slave labour that has to be done, will probably make this more daunting than anyone realizes, no matter how "minimal" we want to make the updates.

Hence, I think that if people are so willing to do this kind of project, some ground rules should be set in place, but maybe that's a subject for its own PR thread.
 
After hearing the arguments back and forth, my official stance is the following:

Keep Gen 4 CAPs in Gen 4, as snapshots of past metagames. Only allow Gen5 CAPs into the CAPOU metagame.

As cool as it is to have the Gen 4 CAPs used in Gen 5, that isn't the ultimate end goal of the CAP Project. Ultimately our goal is the process, the discussions we have. If this means the CAPs are underpowered as new releases are made, that's a livable consequence. We can always make new CAPs, and if older CAPs manage to survive unchanged, it's a testament to how well they were created.

This also rids us of nagging issues like what do we do with Rebound, ShadowStrike, and Paleo Wave. This effectively seals them in a time capsule and we don't have to fight over them anymore.

If we truly do want to build a metagame from scratch, we should expand it from the flavor portions outside of CAP, like Pre-vos made specifically for Gen 4 LC. In any case I think the best course of action is to spend our time looking forward, not backward.
 
Alright, I think this topic has veered in a lot of directions, from discussing CAP in #pokemon to updating with Gen5 moves to getting a subforum in DST. I'd like to narrow the focus of this topic a little more, so let me make some generalizations that have come about from this topic. Feel free to disagree with me on any of these points; I could be wrong.

  • The CAP Metagame should be pursued. There is too much interest in the CAP Metagame to simply ignore it. It erupts into conversations on #cap, #pokemon, and the Pokemon Showdown! chatbox on a regular basis. Furthermore, CAP is all about the process, not the end result. I absolutely love DJD's comparison to CAP in relation to building cars (found in the CAP Mission Statement). CAP is all about learning about competitive Pokemon through building and experimenting. Sometimes we make mistakes, sure, but that causes growth and learning too! The CAP metagame fits into this concept because it adds to the process of CAP and teaches us more about competitive Pokemon. Due to the interest in the CAP metagame and the learning potential, we should move ahead with acknowledging it in some way.

  • CAP may potentially be getting a subforum in DST. I feel like this has less and less to do with the official policy on CAP and more about the interest in CAP from the general Smogon and Pokemon Showdown! communities. It is really up to the higher ups on Smogon to determine whether we get a subforum there or not. If you're worried about confusion: don't. There are multiple way we could link the CAP forum and the DST CAP subforum together, from redirects to announcements to stickies. Don't get caught up on DST in this topic; it increases CAP visibility and provides a place to discuss competitive aspects of Pokemon. Sounds beneficial to me.

  • Revisions are HIGHLY controversial right now. At the moment, I see a lot of different suggestions, and none of them are entirely desirable. The subject of revisions is simply too big to be discussed in this topic alongside of other CAP metagame policy. As a result, revisions will be discussed in an entirely different PRC topic, so please do not post about them here anymore. No matter what happens, CAP Revisions WILL be decided by PRC voting; I am not going to enforce a policy on this and leave everyone feeling bitter.

How does this sound to everyone? In short, there is competitive value in the CAP metagame and that should be explored and supported. Acknowledging the CAP metagame also leads to higher interest in CAP and caters to a wider base of internet-goers. Finally, revisions are simply too controversial to discuss in this topic, so another PRC topic will go up to focus on that specifically.

If you don't post disagreement with the above points, then I will assume that they are true. I am absolutely open to any disagreements, but you must make yourself heard, so please post! If you'd like some clarification, I'd be more than happy to expand upon any of these points. Thanks for reading; great discussion so far.
 
My concerns with a DST forum remain the same. Whether we discuss in the main forum or in a DST forum, I feel we're going to marginalize somebody. And I feel that the people who find CAP as a project are more important not to marginalize.
 
I do not understand what "pursuing the CAP metagame" means. Does this mean we have suspect tests, bans, a council, revisions, what? I support having the CAP metagame, but do not think the metagame or community benefits from any of those things I just listed. Before I can possibly support such a proposal, I would need a much more detailed explanation as to what it would entail. Right now I oppose this movement if only because it is too open-ended.

I essentially feel the same way as cape when it comes to the DST forum. I will not participate in that forum because it is not the CAP forum. Some new people may participate only because it is there. Someone gets marginalized either way. For what it's worth, I do not think the CAP metagame gets enough discussion to even justify having a forum dedicated strictly to it. Once CAP metagame threads overflow the main CAP forum, then we should consider such a motion. Until then, let's just talk about CAP stuff in CAP.

I am okay with your position on revisions right now. Know now, though, that I will essentially be copying and pasting my previous post into whatever new topic comes about on the topic of revisions.
 
At the moment I don't want to see us getting a subforum in DST. It's for the same reason I would state for any offshoot subforum of cap. It would require enough posting to justify its existance. In addition, part of the reason why we decided to make the archives was to clean up the main forum and make it more tempting to post topics like these in the first place. I don't want to see the forum get unnessessarily chopped up.

Think of the main CaP forum as being part DST if you will.
 
Well, the whole DST forum thing is kind of moot now... DST is being broken up and all the metagames put onto the front page. CaP is already on the front page, so I don't really know where else it could go :|

I'm with Dusk on the CaPMeta though... Are we going to do our OWN banlists etc? If so I don't support it purely because it will make it too different from BWOU.
 
Rising_Dusk said:
I do not understand what "pursuing the CAP metagame" means. Does this mean we have suspect tests, bans, a council, revisions, what? I support having the CAP metagame, but do not think the metagame or community benefits from any of those things I just listed. Before I can possibly support such a proposal, I would need a much more detailed explanation as to what it would entail. Right now I oppose this movement if only because it is too open-ended.
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This, mostly. Neither the subject of a CAP metagame forum or revisions are really relevant any more, since they will almost certainly require their own threads, and yet this point is the most ambiguous of the three you listed. Pursuing the CAP metagame could mean all number of things. All that I consider to be true is that "the CAP metagame should exist" - if that is all that you meant then I agree. The rest can be discussed later - it's far too big a topic for a general thread such as this one.

Also in case it wasn't obvious earlier I'll just add my voice to the "no revisions whatsoever" camp - that is, until we get a site framework that can support generational transitions within CAP (so we would have a 4th gen and a 5th gen Colossoil, for example). At that point I may consider it a possibility, but not before.
 
The phrase "pursing the CAP metagame" was intentionally meant to be vague, broad, and general. It's not some sort of trap that I am laying to trick everyone into revisions or something. To be frank, I'm not completely sold on revisions at all; I think both sides of the argument have grounds. That is why revisions will be getting its own PRC thread.

Pursuing the CAP metagame simply means "this is something that has competitive worth and we'd like to support its existence." Not pursuing the CAP metagame would mean being done with CAPs immediately after their playtest, not giving a rip about what happens to them on PS!, and not facilitating discussion of it here. By pursuing the CAP metagame, we're stating that we want discussion on the CAP metagame to take place and we want to encourage battling in the CAP metagame. Let me make some bullet points:

Pursuing the CAP Metagame means:
  • We value CAPs after their playtest for the competitive information they provide on the CAP metagame.
  • We encourage discussion of the CAP metagame in the CAP forums.
  • We develop the CAP metagame through analyses, articles, and Smog articles.
  • We allow users to make RMTs, warstories, and discussion topics on the CAP metagame.

Not pursing the CAP metagame means:
  • Discouraging the discussion of the CAP metagame on the forums.
  • Not making analyses, articles, and Smog articles that pertain to the CAP metagame.
  • Not encouraging users to go onto Pokemon Showdown! and play the CAP metagame.

I feel that this is something that's really simple, but I want to make sure we are all on the same terms here. The result of this thread won't be "we're making revisions" or "we're installing a council". The result of this thread will answer the question: do we as a CAP community care about the CAP metagame? If we do, then let's keep discussing it in the PRC. If we don't... then I guess we're done here. I think the option of not supporting the CAP metagame is closing ourselves off to some incredible potential learning, but I want the option to be available.

I hope that clarifies things. Also, CAP will not be getting a subforum in DST, as decided by some of the Smogon higher ups. So that ends that discussion!
 
Birkal said:
Pursuing the CAP metagame simply means "this is something that has competitive worth and we'd like to support its existence." Not pursuing the CAP metagame would mean being done with CAPs immediately after their playtest, not giving a rip about what happens to them on PS!, and not facilitating discussion of it here. By pursuing the CAP metagame, we're stating that we want discussion on the CAP metagame to take place and we want to encourage battling in the CAP metagame. Let me make some bullet points:

Pursuing the CAP Metagame means:
  • We value CAPs after their playtest for the competitive information they provide on the CAP metagame.
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  • This. This is the point that I wanted clarified. Specifically, whether there is some sort of black and white to this issue. Do we have to value the CAPs at all in the CAP metagame for sake of competitive information? To me this does not seem to be a simple issue at all. I fancy we could easily find a way to write analyses for the CAP metagame, and tiering, and whatnot, without anything more than it being some unofficial part of the project. After all, the site as it stands currently has its analyses, the threat list, and I'm pretty sure there's a guide to the metagame tucked away somewhere. Of course I take issue with some of these (I have my arguments ready to go for when we do get onto the analysis discussion stages) - but I have no idea why we would actively discourage its discussion in the main forum if we didn't have analyses for it. Unless, of course, you meant by those bullet points that these are things that we might include if we went this route, rather than that being a general path.

    To be honest I think the question here is less "do we want to pursue the CAP metagame", which is most certainly not a yes/no question given that everybody will almost certainly say yes, but for different reasons, and more "do we want the significance of the CAP metagame to change from where it currently stands". This is also open to any number of interpretations, but I think here the emphasis is on its significance rather than on the existence of any project associated with it. For my part I have my own thoughts on ways in which we can make the CAP metagame a beneficial learning experience, but that's another topic for another thread.

    Still, thanks for clarifying. I'll say a tentative yes to "pursue the CAP metagame" as it isn't worth getting tangled up in specifics at this stage. The CAP metagame has, I think, as rich a history as the CAP Project and I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anybody who didn't think it should exist.
 
And see, this is exactly why I wanted you to clarify the vagueness of that motion. There are some things I agree with here and some things I disagree with.

We care about the CAP metagame because it's fun and it gives the competitive CAP players something to do inbetween playtests. I like the CAP metagame as a player, and even if "No we don't want to pursue the CAP metagame" is chosen here, it's going to continue being a metagame on PS! because people enjoy it. That is really irrelevant. We have always supported the CAP metagame insofar as "Hey, you can play with all of our past creations in this ridiculous metagame that is definitely not balanced if you want to." It's also fun to talk about. We had a lot of good discussions regarding it as a theoretical and practical amalgam of the CAPs, and still do. RMTs, warstories, discussion threads. These are all cool things we should (and always have) supported. Essentially, what you're proposing with regards to those things is "We change nothing about how we treat the CAP metagame".

That all said, I don't think some of those things you listed are really worth it. We can barely get all of our analyses written for the playtest metagames, which are the types of documentation we actually need as a project. I think trying to write a whole other set of analyses for the CAP metagame is crazy, because instead of talking about BW OU now we have to talk about what adding 13 great Pokemon to the metagame changes about it. And the worst part is that it only gets worse; analyses need to be adjusted substantially or even entirely rewritten whenever we add a new CAP to the CAP metagame. That's really no more feasible a task than is revising the CAPs constantly to make the metagame more balanced after every new CAP. To make matters worse, if we do revisions at all, it'll completely annihilate the analyses and we'll have to do them all over again anyway. This is, as I've termed it before, Pandora's Box. We shouldn't open it.

I don't really like the way this whole "support the CAP metagame" thing is termed, quite frankly. Essentially, the good parts of what you talk about, Birkal, are things we have always supported. We don't need a PRC thread to continue doing those things (warstories, RMTs, The Smog articles, on-site articles, discussion threads). However, it appears to me that several much less desirable things are piggy-backing on your "CAP metagame support" campaign (portent for revisions, CAP metagame analyses, a new CAP forum in DST, etc) and advertising themselves as though "We have to officially add support for new stuff if we're going to continue supporting the old stuff" even though that's not true. Maybe that's not your intent at all (Nay, I know it's not your intent), but that's what it says to me and you should definitely reconsider what your goals even are with this topic.

I think the best thing we could possible do with regards to the CAP metagame is to treat the CAP metagame no differently than we ever have and to keep allowing things like playing it, RMTs, warstories, The Smog articles, on-site articles, and discussion threads.

Essentially, we needn't change a dang thing about how we handle it. What we do now is great, supports discussion, and works well to not waste any of our prominent users' time.
 
Alright, so I know this is going to be controversial and comes with its own difficulties as far as breaking the base, but:

Why not have 3 CAP Metagames?

Specifically I'm thinking about:

CAP Gen 4 OU: Has all the Gen 4 CAPs and no Gen 5 CAPs. Metagame is Gen 4 OU + Gen 4 CAPs

CAP Gen 5 OU: Has all the Gen 5 CAPs and no Gen 4 CAPs. Metagame is Gen 5 OU + Gen 5 CAPs

CAP DW: Has all CAPs released and given "Hidden Revisions". Metagame is Gen 5 OU + All CAPs

Obviously this last one would be the most controversial, but we would state up front that it would be entirely a fan offshoot and would have to be maintained only be interested users. Basically CAP DW would update while the other metagames would keep the CAPs as-is, such that we could have stable, steady metagames as well as a "fan metagame" of unreleased and unofficial additions.

A question of process naturally comes up. Like I said, I only think CAP DW would work if it were entirely fan-based and did not consume official moderator time. The main focus of the CAPinet would be on the Gen 4 and Gen 5 Games, with the DW forced to assemble and update itself with a coalition of the willing. I don't know if that's feasible or simply makes it too complicated, but it does spare us from having to thrust all of CAP into a one-size-fits-all solution on revisions and their place in the metagame.
 
If we're talking about fan offshoots and somehow managing to justify that, why don't we talk about project evolution? You know, the fan offshoot that never was because Doug specifically said that we're strictly not a fanboi project and should not be doing things just because we can. We need a meaningful competitive reason to do stuff, and quite frankly, if we can justify "Hidden Revisions!!" for CAPs, we can justify doing an evolution project. Once we can do that, we can justify making Pokemon without concepts and at that point we may as well just throw the mission statement out the window. Seriously, let's keep at the forefront of this discussion why we do any of this stuff in the first place. Some things like art in CAPs and the pre-evos are natural evolutions of the project's desire to create a "whole" Pokemon, but that is not true with BW updates or 'hidden revisions' or what-have-you.

As far as "DPP CAP" and "BW CAP" is concerned, I have never opposed such a motion. When PS! gets DPP support, I'll probably make the metagame anyway. I'll eventually also make "BW CAP LC" and hopefully once they get made "DPP CAP LC" for good times had by all. These things are natural progressions of what we already have. Beyond that, though, I don't think is fair to assume is fine at all.
 
Rising_Dusk said:
If we're talking about fan offshoots and somehow managing to justify that, why don't we talk about project evolution? You know, the fan offshoot that never was because Doug specifically said that we're strictly not a fanboi project and should not be doing things just because we can. We need a meaningful competitive reason to do stuff, and quite frankly, if we can justify "Hidden Revisions!!" for CAPs, we can justify doing an evolution project. Once we can do that, we can justify making Pokemon without concepts and at that point we may as well just throw the mission statement out the window. Seriously, let's keep at the forefront of this discussion why we do any of this stuff in the first place. Some things like art in CAPs and the pre-evos are natural evolutions of the project's desire to create a "whole" Pokemon, but that is not true with BW updates or 'hidden revisions' or what-have-you.

As far as "DPP CAP" and "BW CAP" is concerned, I have never opposed such a motion. When PS! gets DPP support, I'll probably make the metagame anyway. I'll eventually also make "BW CAP LC" and hopefully once they get made "DPP CAP LC" for good times had by all. These things are natural progressions of what we already have. Beyond that, though, I don't think is fair to assume is fine at all.
Click to expand...

That particular slippery slope is fallacious and you know it. Obviously we wouldn't call them "Hidden Revisions" because that would be self-parodic (they would *not* be hidden by definition) in addition to sounding terrible. I don't think it'd be out of the question though to have "Dream World" CAPs that just happen to have 5th Gen Moves on them, much like DW Superpower Contrary Spinda. There is in fact game precedent in the Dream World for Pokemon getting moves they otherwise would not know, and it's highly convenient that it's only available in 5th Gen.

In any case at least CAP Gen 5 OU lets us have our starting metagame without killing ourselves over trying to balance the fact Tail Glow got a huge buff and Lightningrod is arguably the more competitive of Voodoom's Abilities in Gen 5, or the fact the Gen 4 CAP's are "missing" moves.

The Dream World option sidelines those disputes and let's us move forward in the here and now, and determine what we'll do in the future. It also establishes a precedent that for all intents and purposes, the Gen 4 CAP Concepts really can be re-done without stepping on old ground. If we make another Unaware Decentralizer for example, we won't be pressured to make it entirely different from Arghonaut since Arghonaut won't be used in our officially supported Gen 5 OU metagame. Instead what would happen is we'd have a freer process to work with and if we wanted Arghonaut to do different Gen 5 only capacities in Dream World, we'd have an outlet for that. Even if we somehow came to the same conclusions on all other factors and the spread differed only by 10 stat points, we'd still use Gen 5 Decentralizer uniquely in CAP Gen 5 OU instead of trying to muddle through a mixed Gen 4 / Gen 5 hodgepodge (which DW CAP would fix by giving Gen 4 CAPs parity, making any other similarities superficial. Besides, maybe you'd want two "Arghonauts" on your team in DW CAP.)

In general I think it's an elegant solution to multiple existing and possibly unforseen problems. It gives us a metagame we don't have to finagle with right now, an older generation metagame that doesn't change unless we want it to, and a sort of gray area we can hash out later at the whims of the community's interest.
 
The real point in Rising_Dusk's argument wasn't the slippery slope, though. The thing to ask here is whether this free-for-all-with-revisions CAP metagame is in keeping with the mission statement. What does this do for us as far as learning about the metagame goes? It's not like real OU where Dream World releases are forced in sporadically and proves detrimental to the integrity of the suspect testing process. This would be a metagame that we would try to engineer while intentionally screwing the process up by making more fakemons. I doubt it would really solve the "issue" of revisiting old CAP concepts, either, because the old CAPs would still exist, and if the community somehow did decide to revisit an old concept verbatim, it would be a good experiment to see how gen 5 would handle it differently from gen 4, which also does not hinge on the existence of CAP DW.

At the end of the day, we should support projects that will work, and not support projects that won't. Rising_Dusk's point with the Evo analogy is that we have an example where a project focused on something other than learning something about the metagame directly (making a crappy Pokémon better), and the resulting lack of direction was (as far as I can tell) why it failed and Doug had to step in to stop it. The mission statement provides a purpose for CAP projects, and something that ignores that mission statement (or tries to fulfill it but fails) is going to lack the strong sense of purpose that the main project has.

I mean, I guess it could be suggested that CAP DW would just add little "canonical bells and whistles" to CAPs. I think my post #11 is still a good answer to this.
 
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