Policy Review Policy Review - Updating the Process for 5th Gen

[tennisace]

Approved by Wyverii

If you are not an experienced member of the CAP community, it is strongly recommended that you do not post in this thread.

This thread is intended to contain intelligent discussion and commentary by experienced members of the CAP project regarding CAP policy, process, and rules. As such, the content of this thread will be moderated more strictly than other threads on the forum. The posting rules for Policy Review threads are contained here.

As everybody knows, 5th gen was released, mechanics are pretty much figured out, dream world Pokemon leaking in, yadda yadda yadda. With that, there have been a few large changes to Pokemon. The largest is of course the invention of the Dream World, which in effect gives Pokemon three abilities. In addition, there are no move tutors yet (except for Draco Meteor/Starter Elementals). However, as Deck Knight pointed out to me, egg move pools have gotten larger, and moves that would have been tutored in the 3rd/4th gen are now egg moves.

So, here's what needs to be changed:

• The number of abilities per Pokemon is now a maximum of three. However, I would make a rule so that only two competitive abilities are allowed if three are chosen.
  • In reality, I'd like to brainstorm some sort of metric for abilities that are excellent, situational, or non-competitive so that we can say something like "either one excellent or two situational abilities is the limit". That's another thread though.
• We need to re-analyze the average egg movepool in terms of competitive/non competitive moves, since it has increased. This comes with the removal of tutor moves from the process (except in the case of Draco Meteor, which is given to every Dragon-type).
  • as an addition to that point, the new attacks need to be sorted into competitive/non-competitive, in addition to old attacks getting revamps -DONE
• The process guide needs to be re-written to accompany these changes.
• A standard form of polling must be chosen. From what I could tell from the other thread, Instant Runoff Voting was a popular option, and it seems quite fair since it incorporates the preference of the voter while eliminating the manipulativeness of standard bold preference votes. The only exception would be in art/sprite threads since there are so many choices generally.

I'd like discussion to focus only on the creation of new 5th gen CAPs, 4th gen CAPs are not in the picture at all, do not mention them. Happy Posting!

 

[bugmaniacbob]

Not entirely sure how relevant this is or anything, but I felt it should probably be discussed here regardless.

The point I want to address is the release of abilities that we assume are in the Dream World. The thing is, no 5th Generation Pokemon has yet received a Dream World ability, and apparently overworld sprites for BW Pokemon are not even coded into the game, so it seems very unlikely that any Dream World abilities will ever be released before a sequel game or similar. If we are to assume that any new CAPmon from here on out are 5th Gen Pokemon (we don't have a policy on that though, so maybe this is up for discussion), I'm not entirely sure we can give them Dream World abilities, especially with all the recent arguments about 'staying true to the integrity of the cartridge' (which I don't believe in, but I hate inconsistency). We would not even have known about the Dream World abilities were it not for the ROM hacks.

This opens up a number of alleys. We could give the new CAPmon Dream World abilities, and then wait until confirmation on Dream World abilities for 5th Gen Pokemon before programming them in, or we could make revisions once the legality of these abilities is confirmed. If we aren't concerned with in-game legality and precedent, then naturally this is not relevant, but this would seem to conflict with our attitudes on bloated CAP movepools and regulating abilities, and the like.

Also, on another note, would there be any restrictions on CAPmon in terms of Dream World + move legality? (I don't know the logistics of specific illegalities, so I'm not sure if this point needs to be brought up, but I felt I ought to mention it anyway).

Sorry if I'm coming off a bit incoherent but it's late here. I'll probably post some more critiques or suggestions later if I find any, but for now at least the plan in the OP looks pretty rock solid.

 

[tennisace]

The point I want to address is the release of abilities that we assume are in the Dream World. The thing is, no 5th Generation Pokemon has yet received a Dream World ability, and apparently overworld sprites for BW Pokemon are not even coded into the game, so it seems very unlikely that any Dream World abilities will ever be released before a sequel game or similar. If we are to assume that any new CAPmon from here on out are 5th Gen Pokemon (we don't have a policy on that though, so maybe this is up for discussion), I'm not entirely sure we can give them Dream World abilities, especially with all the recent arguments about 'staying true to the integrity of the cartridge' (which I don't believe in, but I hate inconsistency). We would not even have known about the Dream World abilities were it not for the ROM hacks.

I had actually totally forgotten about that... unless someone can come up with a reason why we should give them dream world abilities now, that point is moot. However I'd still like to someday come up with a metric/rating for abilities in terms of power/usefulness.

Also, on another note, would there be any restrictions on CAPmon in terms of Dream World + move legality? (I don't know the logistics of specific illegalities, so I'm not sure if this point needs to be brought up, but I felt I ought to mention it anyway).

Since CAP Pokemon are 5th Gen there are no tutors to deal with (aside from Draco Meteor), so there is no legality issue there. As for egg moves, standard legality stuff applies depending on the group.

 

[smallvizier]

There are a few questions regarding IRV which were not resolved during the Polling thread.

• A standard form of polling must be chosen. From what I could tell from the other thread, Instant Runoff Voting was a popular option, and it seems quite fair since it incorporates the preference of the voter while eliminating the manipulativeness of standard bold preference votes. The only exception would be in art/sprite threads since there are so many choices generally.

1. Do we still intend to have two rounds of voting?

Voting for types, we typically have an initial slate of four options, and then a second vote with just two. With IRV we have the opportunity to decide the winner straight away. Doing this would make the CaP process quicker.

On the other hand, having a final vote for just the top two contenders focuses discussion, and might bring out strengths and weaknesses that had not previously been highlighted. I would prefer to keep two rounds.

2. Should we select larger initial slates?

If we're sticking with two rounds of voting, we could have a larger slate in the first round (where the TL considers it appropriate). But is this a good idea? Or will people give the options more thought if the slates remain tightly focused?

3. What do we do with the [first vote in] the art threads?

This is an issue because the slate is huge. Asking people to rank them all would get silly (by the time I had to weigh up #8 vs #9 I would probably get fed up). The main options here are

1. stay with bold voting
2. IRV, limited to (say) five picks per voter - keeping things simple.

Bold voting is simpler for the voters, and simpler to count as well. But ultimately I'd recall one of the reasons we reviewed polling in the first place:

1. Bold voting encourages you not to pick your second favourite, in case they knock your first choice out. This is a form of tactical voting, and it's not fun.

EDIT: In both cases, I'm suggesting that's just the *first* vote, and there's still a final afterwards. Just lets people 'think' more about their ultimate choice.
----------------------

As far as abilities go, I guess it's off the table now - but I do not agree that a pokemon should only be allowed one exceptional ability.

Rather, pokemon with an exceptional ability should receive worse stats or a weakened movepool, so that they remain balanced. And if they have that balancing factor, what's wrong with giving them a pair of good abilities?

Moreover, with team previews removing a lot of the 'educated guesswork,' I would welcome a pokemon with three of the best situational abilities, such that each would be a reasonable choice. That pokemon would be a real challenge to build, but that's a good thing! If we succeeded then we'd inevitably learn a lot about balancing different roles for a pokemon - and it could really keep battlers on their toes.

 

[tennisace]

In regards to your points one and three, IRV is designed to get a winner instantly. That said, I wouldn't mind IRV in the first poll and then taking the top two choices for a one on one vote in the second round, that seems quite fair since in CAP opinions are known to change.

As far as your second point, slates aren't capped except by the physical limitation of the forum (10 option limit in the poll). TLs have always been allowed (now more than ever) to pick as many or as few options as they want. Before, the only way to include more than 10 was a bold poll, which was messy for the vote counter and the mod who had to clean up all the damn posts (you don't even know). With IRV, this gets much much easier!

And in regards to point three (IRV for a limit of x), won't work, since the point of IRV is to rate all the choices because the lowest vote getting choices get eliminated immediately. Not putting choices on the ballot is dumb. However, the easiest way to knock the slate down to a more managable level is to do a Bold vote (i.e. vote for at least x but not more than x, where x is a mid sized number, say 5-10). The top x in the poll (about half the slate) move onto the IRV stage, where people only have to rank maybe 10 tops. Then, the top two move on to a head to head vote.

As far as abilities go, I guess it's off the table now - but I do not agree that a pokemon should only be allowed one exceptional ability.

Rather, pokemon with an exceptional ability should receive worse stats or a weakened movepool, so that they remain balanced. And if they have that balancing factor, what's wrong with giving them a pair of good abilities?

This is why I would like to come up with some sort of metric for rating abilities, because since we have a metric for rating stat spreads, we could tie them together and say something like "ok so the stats are very good this means you can have two abilities ranked either 'situational' or 'good' or one 'excellent' and one 'non-competitive'." You're completely correct in saying that the stats should determine the power of the ability, but as of right now, we don't have a way to say what abilities fit where besides "well, we know that pressure is a solid ability but intimidate is much much better".

Moreover, with team previews removing a lot of the 'educated guesswork,' I would welcome a pokemon with three of the best situational abilities, such that each would be a reasonable choice. That pokemon would be a real challenge to build, but that's a good thing! If we succeeded then we'd inevitably learn a lot about balancing different roles for a pokemon - and it could really keep battlers on their toes.

This is getting more and more off-topic but I like that idea if 5th gen pokemon were able to use dream world abilities that they were given, which they aren't. However we COULD do this with two abilities and it would serve the same purpose.

 

[Rising_Dusk]

The number of abilities per Pokemon is now a maximum of three. However, I would make a rule so that only two competitive abilities are allowed if three are chosen.

I like this. I know that not all Pokemon have DW abilities right now, but I think that we're better off if we automatically assume that "our CAP has had its DW ability released" to simplify the process and not have to do some crazy add-an-ability-later stuff. That said, I also agree with you when you say that you want a metric to measure the strength of abilities. However, honestly, we'd want a metric to measure the strength of abilities against everything the cap has. I'd be OK with 2 very strong abilities on a Pokemon with many other weaknesses, for example.

This gets really complicated really fast, so I think the best option is to just have TLs that understand what we're talking about for "balance" and can use their power to keep things in order. While on that topic, we're keeping TLs or going to that other strange system we birthed a bit ago?

A standard form of polling must be chosen. From what I could tell from the other thread, Instant Runoff Voting was a popular option, and it seems quite fair since it incorporates the preference of the voter while eliminating the manipulativeness of standard bold preference votes. The only exception would be in art/sprite threads since there are so many choices generally.

IRV is something that has my support, although I definitely like the idea posted later in this thread of picking the top two and having a normal poll between those at the end. I think this is really important because it keeps to the spirit of the competition of CAP and allows people to rally behind one or another, etc. Basically, it just makes it a lot more fun with no cost to the process or the mods. I think we should do it.

In the case where there are too many entrants and IRV becomes slightly cumbersome (say N > M, where N is the number of entries and M is some threshold we choose), then we can do a bold vote to narrow it down to the top M entries and do an IRV amongst those. In this vein, we need only 3 types of voting for all of the CAP process:

• IRV
• Unweighted Bold Vote
• Standard 1v1 Thread Poll

I think this is simple, like we want it, unbiased, clean, and smart. Let's do it.

The process guide needs to be re-written to accompany these changes.

I'll work on this once we sort out everything that's changing.

 

[zarator]

Sorry Tennis, but I'm a bit skeptical about your idea of measuring abilities on power, and thus limiting every CAP to a certain number of good abilities, for a variety of reasons.

First of all, this has no correspondence with what happens to in-game Pokémon. We have Pokémon with a fantastic slate of abilities (like Yanmega) and Pokémon with a rather mediocre one (like Metagross). This is not like with movepools, where aside from very few exceptions like Wobbuffet, GF seems to follow certain defined standards. I don't want to say this limitation shouldn't be enforced solely because of this reason, of course. I only wanted to point out that there's no support from this side.

More to the point, a Pokémon is a complex sum of factors, where they interact with each other in multiple ways. This has two consequences.
Firstly, a Pokémon must not have to be balanced on every aspect (type, ability, movepool, stats) to be balanced on the whole. Take Yanmega, for example. He was blessed with two exceptional abilities (the list of things which could be broken by one of these alone is so long), but it is held back by awful typing, average movepool and overall balanced stats. On the other side, we have things like Ononokusu with great typing and stats but mediocre movepool and abilities. I think we can trust our TLs enough to think that, if they decide to go "overboard" on one side, they'll be able to balance out things in the total. The only problem with this is probably that almost all CAPs will end up with good typing and ability (since they're chosen first) and worse movepool (since it's made later), but that could be handled differently - for example, allowing the TL to tweak the order of options, or something like that (I won't go further to avoid derailing the thread).
Secondly, do you really think you can rate the abilities that easily? Many abilities have completely different worth depending on the other aspects of the Pokémon. For example, a Ground-type Pokémon will benefit from Mold Breaker much more than, say, a Ice-type. Similarly, special sweepers will find Clear Body rather pointless, contrary to physical inclined ones which will appreciate the Intimidate immunity. Technician on Roserade is useless, compared to Technician on Breloom. And the list goes on for long.
You could assume that the rating for each ability will be based on the best case scenario (for example, Technician will be valued with priority moves and the like in mind), but even if this has questionable effects (Does this mean that every time we give, say, Tinted Lens to a Pokémon we must assume it will get Outrage or something like that?), do you think it is really possible, like we did with stats and typing? Those two could be easily rated because, in the end, you can measure them in terms of potential damage dealt or received (be it about your relative Atk/Def, your position in the speed chart or your potential coverage/resistances) But abilities? How can you compare, say, Natural Cure to Intimidate? Mischievous Heart and Skill Link? They are not measurable in terms of damage dealt/received, since many of them do not affect damage directly in anyway (Magic Mirror, for example). This is as if I asked you how to rate moves - ALL moves - based on their power. Which is the power of Encore? of Toxic? of Dragon Dance?

tl;dr: There's no way you can find a common metric to measure abilities' power, since their effects are so diversified compared to stats and typing. And even if it was possible, it would probably encourage people to abuse every ability to its fullest instead of thinking of creative ways of using them (like giving a bunch of priority moves to a Technician mon whereas the abilitiy can have more creative uses - see Persian's Nasty Plot set).

Now, if you show me my arguments are flawed or can be answered to somehow, fine. But I think you should address them before moving on.

 

[Aerodactyl Legend]

Zarator, you make a good point that you can't strictly measure all abilities and declare which is truly better than which for every single ability. In my opinion, who's to say Intimidate is more effective than Moxie for example. If given to a Pokemon prefectly tailored for the job, it would look like the best ability.

Hopefully I don't make this sound complicated or gimmicky.

However, because of the existance of clearly unimpressive abilities such as Keen Eye versus "gamebreaking" ones such as Shadow Tag, it would be possible to rate them somehow. Not a strict "this is better than that and so on..." list, but a more general, less strict system in which abilities can be defined and set on the same level. With this in mind, we could make some sort of Ability Tier List with the clearly better abilities on top and the less useful ones on bottom, with possibly, a middle section for the average ones. This could make it possible to group stuff like Intimidate, Moxie, SwiftS/Chloro/SandT, Shadow Tag together and others at the top in a big list so we wouldn't have a small pool to work with. The middle section would broaden the choices, while the bottom would probably be filled with least used/useful stuff. Discussion would have to be made for a lot of them though on different threads, unless people can submit their own lists and we vote on them. Gave a lot of actual examples on how it could be done, sorry, but the base idea of tier lists could be possible.

 

[zarator]

Aerodactyl, I think your ideas with Ability tiers has a little problem though. First of all, I'll show you a (tentative) list of abilities which could potentially break a currently existing Pokémon if we were to give him said ability (assume each "broken case" alone, not all of them thrown together). Oh, and don't care about flavor, this is only for the sake of example

Hide

Adaptability (just give it to one of the 600 BST Dragons - even Onono works)
Arena Trap (I guess any of the numerous powerhouses of OU will do, especially setuppers)
Clorophyll (Heatran I guess, although I'm not totally sure)
Download (Imagine a good mixed attacker like Salamence with this)
Drizzle (no need of explaination)
Drought (same as Drizzle)
Harvest (quite a lot of things actually, this ability is sick enough to turn almost everything with good speed and Ingrain/Aqua Ring BPed to into an infinite staller)
Huge Power (I won't comment this)
Inconsistent (again, no comment on this)
Levitate (Putting aside for a moment the fact that every pure Electric would instantly have no weaknesses, even stuff like Levitate Heatran may be suspect-worthy)
Lightningrod (I guess we could classify Lightningrod Gyarados as a potential suspect, right?)
Magic Guard (No LO recoil, Poison/Burn pseudoimmunity, SS/Hail/Hazards immunity... a lot of Pokémon could abuse this to reach Suspect status. Salamence, Infernape or Voltolos just off the top of my head)
Magic Mirror (Again, a very potent ability which could shine on every good Pokémon)
Magnet Pull (Same deal with Arena Trap, only a bit more specialized)
Mischievous Heart (Mischievous Heart Sleep moves, anyone?)
Motor Drive (Gyarados again, I guess?)
Multitype (I don't think I need to comment this)
No Guard (Ok, OHKO moves are banned, but imagine, let's say, No Guard Victini with Purgatory and Focus Blast)
Own Tempo (STAB Own Tempo Outrage anyone?)
Perversity (I guess Perversity Draco Meteor qualifies...)
Poison Heal (Almost any Non-Steel/Poison wall would greatly benefit from this, and I'm pretty sure something like, say, Blissey, could even push it to suspect)
Pure Power (Same with Huge Power)
Regeneration (I seriously would fear something like Regeneration Sazandora or hell, any of those sick Choice Band/Specs monsters)
Sand Strength (SS Garchomp anyone?)
Sand Throw (again, ST Garchomp somehow fits, but I guess ST Metagross goes too, or hell, pretty much any sweeper with 130+ offenses - Kyuremu?^^)
Scrappy (I guess many of you would not want to see this ability on Forretress or Starmie right, stall players?)
Serene Grace (I could be lame and say Serene Grace Shaymin Landform, but imagine Serene Grace Latios with 100% Luster Purge followed by Dragon Pulse/Draco Meteor, or Serene Grace Boil Over Suicune...)
Shadow Tag (same with Arena Trap or Magnet Pull - but worse)
Shed Skin (There are potentially much more broken ShedRest abusers than Zuruzukin out there)
Simple (Simple Dragon Dance, Simple Butterfly Dance... and hell, even Simple Tail Glow for Special based Belly Drum with no recoil!)
Speed Boost (Another of those abilities where you really only have to choice one of those endless frightening sweepers to have fun)
Swift Swim (if you thought Swift Swim Kingdra was bad, what about... umm, Swift Swim Manaphy?)
Tinted Lens (Again, if one of those 600 BST Dragons got this...)
Unburden (Chesto Rest Garchomp, or Manaphy, or... a lot of things, really)
Volt Absorb (Same deal with Lightningrod and Motor Drive, I would not wanna face Gyara with this, but even Suicune would be sick)
Wonder Guard (lol)

Before going on, I'd like to point out that this is a REALLY tentative list. If you think Electric immune Gyara is not broken, or that there are combos I missed, fine, but that's really not my point.

Now, there are two things to consider. First of all, are all these abilities on the same level of power? Certainly not. But I guess we can fairly easily divide them in abilities which broken the Pokémon only under very specific conditions (like Serene Grace, Own Tempo or Perversity), and abilities which can break the Pokémon almost by themselves (like Shadow Tag, Magic Guard or Magic Mirror). There are arguably a lot of controversial cases (Swift Swim, for example), but let's ignore them for now and assume for the sake of the argument that we can divide all these abilities in these two categories.
Now, let's take one of those abilities which do not break any Pokémon at all, like Intimidate. And now, let's compare it to one of the abilities above. I think it's fairly obvious that many of them, in most cases, are inferior to Intimidate (it may be cool and all, but I would probably never choose Serene Grace Salamence over Intimidate Salamence, for example).

Now, we have two possible options if we want to go ahead and tier these abilities anyway. Either we tier them assuming each of them will be "abused" well (i.e. we'll not give Perversity to something like Weavile, for example), or we tier them in different ways depending on the movepool/typing (I guess it's obvious that, if we again consider Perversity, Perversity Hammer Arm is good, but not at the same level with Perversity Draco Meteor, or Perversity V-Generate).
Now, if we tier them assuming they'll be used "to the max", we face the problem I outlined in the post above. Remember when, at the beginning of CAP10, we excluded Multitype as a possible alternative since it would have determined almost by itself the whole Pokémon? Now we would have to face this inconvenience with every single ability. If we give Serene Grace to a Pokémon, we'll have to assume that it WILL get Air Slash or Iron Head (assuming it's tiering is high enough to consider that), or, conversely, that it WON'T get them (which is equally bad). You can argue that we won't try to push everything to the max, but I think CAP veterans know that we generally will (think to how we push stat spread submissions to the limits of the rating every damn time).
A possible solution to this could be tiering abilities differently depending on how much they're abused. For example, Serene Grace on a Pokémon with only elemental beams/punches would be probably be tiered lower than on a Pokémon with Air Slash or Boil Over. But since we generally decide abilities in the beginning, I don't think this is feasible.

tl;dr: No matter how you tier the abilities, every tier decision will have a limiting effect on how we create the Pokémon as a whole, either by forcing us to abuse every damn combo out there (the Pokémon got Scrappy? Let's give it Rapid Spin!) or not to do so (the Pokémon got Scrappy? No way we'll give it Rapid Spin!). Let's have the TL handle this instead of forcing arbitrary constraints

 

[bugmaniacbob]

Was bored, so I tried to establish the metric for abilities.

NB. Where the abilities have significant variance in competitive effect, this is marked thus:
(t) - the type of the Pokemon affects usefulness
(m) - the movepool of the Pokemon affects usefulness
(s) - the stats and build of the Pokemon affect usefulness

[B]Banned[/B]

Inconsistent

[B]High effect:activation[/B]

Adaptability
Air Lock
Arena Trap [I](inferior to Shadow Tag)[/I]
Clear Body
Cloud Nine
Competitive Spirit
Cursed Body
Download
Drizzle
Drought
Eccentric
Filter
Guts
Heat Rampage
Huge Power
Hydration
Ice Body
Illusion
Immunity
Insomnia
Intimidate
Lightningrod
Liquid Ooze
Magic Guard
Magic Mirror
Motor Drive
Multi-Scale
Multi-type
Natural Cure
Poison Heal
Poison Rampage [I](inferior to Guts)[/I]
Pure Power
Quick Feet
Rain Dish
Regeneration
Sand Stream
Shadow Tag
Snow Warning
Solar Power
Solid Rock
Speed Boost
Storm Drain
Sturdy
Suction Cups
Tinted Lens
Trace
Unaware
Vital Spirit
Volt Absorb 
Water Absorb
White Smoke
Wicked Thief
Wonder Guard

[B]High effect:activation with varying usability[/B]

Bad Dreams (m)
Blaze (t)
Chlorophyll (s)
Compoundeyes (m) [I](inferior to No Guard)[/I]
Dry Skin (t) [I](inferior to Water Absorb and Storm Drain)[/I]
Flash Fire (t)
Flower Gift (s)
Herbivore (t)
Levitate (t)
Limber (s)
Magnet Pull (t)
Mischievous Heart (m)
Mould Breaker (m)
Moxie (s)
No Guard (m)
Perversity (m)
Sand Strength (s)
Sand Throw (s)
Scrappy (t)(m)
Serene Grace (m)
Sheer Force (m)
Simple (m)
Swift Swim (s)
Technician (m)
Terra Volt (m)
Turbo Blaze (m)

[B]Low effect:activation[/B]

Aftermath
Anger Point
Battle Armour
Colour Change
Damp
Frisk
Inner Focus
Marvel Scale
Miracle Skin
Mummy
Pick Up
Pressure
Rivalry
Rough Skin
Sand Veil
Shed Skin
Shell Armour
Shield Dust
Slip Through
Sniper
Snow Cloak
Soundproof
Steadfast
Steel Thorns
Sticky Hold
Super Luck
Synchronise
Water Veil

[B]Low effect:activation with varying usability[/B]

Analyse (s)
Breakable Armour (s)
Daruma Mode (s)
Dust-proof (t)
Forecast (s)
Gluttony (s)
Harvest (s)
Heart of Justice (t)
Heatproof (t)
Hustle (s)
Hyper Cutter (s)
Iron Fist (m)
Klutz (m)
Leaf Guard (t)
Overgrow (t)
Reckless (m)
Rock Head (m)
Self-Conscious (t)
Skill Link (m)
Stall (m)
Swarm (t)
Torrent (t)
Unburden (s)
Victory Star (m)

[B]Uncompetitive[/B]

Anticipation
Big Pecks
Cute Charm
Early Bird
Effect Spore
Faint Hearted
Flame Body
Forewarn
Friend Card
Healing Heart
Heavy Metal
Honey Gather
Illuminate
Keen Eye
Light Metal
Magma Armour
Minus
Normalise
Oblivious
Own Tempo
Plus
Poison Hand
Poison Point
Run Away
Slow Start
Static
Stench
Tangled Feet
Telepathy
Tension
Truant

Firstly, I just got rid of the 'uncompetitive' abilities, as these either had no or minor effects in-battle. I don't think anybody will object to my doing this first.

Second, I tried to establish a method of separating the (long) list of abilities that actually did something. The metric I used for this was simply weighing the effect next to the requirements for activation. For example, Marvel Scale has a low rating, since the requirements for activation compromise defensive ability, and therefore the overall effect. Thus, most of the 'lower' abilities have either difficult requirements for activation (like Anger Point and Blaze) or else average, situational, or unreliable effects (such as Shell Armour and Synchronise).

On the other hand, I also split the two lists up further, to separate generally universally useful abilities, such as Intimidate, from those that are extremely or heavily reliant on the Pokemon in question, such as No Guard. These abilities were then moved up or down the list for usefulness in terms of exactly how reliant they are. For example, Rock Head could be ridiculously useful, like on Wood Hammer/Flare Blitz/Head Smash Pyroak, but this is heavily reliant on the Pokemon, and unless we were deliberately building the Pokemon to take advantage of those sorts of attacks, it would likely be of little use, hence why it is placed in the 'lower' tier.

These 'reliant' abilities should be categorised as competitive or uncompetitive on a case-by-case basis for each CAP, as I cannot quite see any other way of doing it.

Also, as a proposal, I should like to ask that Drizzle, Drought, Eccentric, Arena Trap, Shadow Tag, Magic Guard, Wonder Guard, Bad Dreams, Terra Volt, Turbo Blaze, Multitype, and Victory Star be classified as banned abilities. Drizzle and Drought are immensely specific, Eccentric has kind-of been 'done' already, Arena Trap and Shadow Tag are slightly desperate, Magic Guard pretty much ruins any Pokemon we make, and Wonder Guard is broken. As for the others, they are legendary exclusives, and I think we should follow the same principles as the move lists here.

Thoughts?

 

[Staraptor Call]

The placement of some of those abilities into "high effect," "low effect," and "uncompetitive" categories is highly subjective. For example, I would argue that Flame Body and Static are not uncompetitive, because they can help ones team by occasionally statusing the opponent's Pokemon. Also, Liquid Ooze should be low because draining moves are uncommon, Stall should be lowered to uncompetitive because it has a detrimental effect, and Rough Skin and Steel Thorns should be raised to High because contact moves are common and 12.5% damage is a significant amount. Other people might have different ideas about which abilities should be in which categories, so the categorization of abilities should be put up to a vote. Voting on which abilities should be in which categories will give us the fairest, most accurate picture of how good each ability is, rather than relying on one person's opinion.

 

[zarator]

Guys, I think we should think more about why we are tiering them in the first place. About how this tiering could affect the whole process. Even if we do come to an agreement about abilities' tiering (I warn you, though - it'll be much harder than with moves), so what? Are we gonna exclude from the beginning the "good abilities"? I may agree with forbidding from the beginning... let's see... Drizzle, Drought, Eccentric, Huge Power/Pure Power, Shadow Tag (maybe - I'm not sold on this), Wonder Guard and all the legendary exclusive ones like Victory Star and Bad Dreams. But what about Speed Boost? No Guard? Tinted Lens? Magic Mirror? All these abilities are incredibly good, but not inherently broken like the three above. Do we really want to limit every CAP to generic Intimidate-like abilities from the very beginning?

I could understand why we had to tier moves - because we needed the discussion about movepools to be actually meaningful and not all-inclusive. But we do not need to do so for abilities. The only reason we would need to rate them is if we do not trust enough our TLs, which is kinda awkward IMO. If the community (and the TL before them) lean towards a Simple Pokémon, let them do so - the TL will use its best judge about balancing the Pokémon throughout the rest of the process. Maybe we'll get a sort of Infernape-like Pokémon with Simple Cheer Up, leaving the opponent guessing whether the Pokémon will go physical, special or mixed... Just off the top of my head. The point is: don't limit options prejudiciously without a good reason (like the ones behind Drizzle/Drought forbidding, most likely).

@BMB: A good effort and starting point, but as Staraptor Call pointed out, still highly controversial. For example, if you had a Pokémon with Ability1: Aftermath and Ability2: Vital Spirit, which one would you use the most? Aftermath? I don't think so. Plus, I disagree on Magic Guard, and I guess you kinda forgot Huge Power/Pure Power.

 

[smallvizier]

I feel the best use for a tier-list (such as bmbob's, good on you for rolling your sleeves up) is as a reference: not part of the rules.

It wouldn't hurt to link it at the start of the abilities thread, just to remind people of what some of the options are and where they stand in relation to the others. It would also be handy to say, at the movepool stage, "well we gave it a highly effective ability so perhaps we should be showing restraint." But IMO we'd be going too far if we tried to make hard and fast rules.

I think that resources such as bmbob's list and any further work could certainly help guide discussion, and for certain concepts the TL may wish to go further and set up a vote for 'which tier should the ability be in?' - but that should be at the TL's discretion.

 

[Rising_Dusk]

I don't like the idea of tiering abilities at all. What I think we should do is eyeball it; we don't need to have an "X > Y" system for abilities, but rather just have enough of an understanding that if we give a Pokemon an intense ability, we must weaken it in some other way. This is especially relevant because like I said above, we have to weigh abilities not against just each other, but against the entire CAP that has come to be at that stage of the process. For that reason, the metric or tiering proposed is completely irrelevant and unacceptable. In an ideal world, sure, we could measure the relative strength of all things and do things that way, but that's not feasible here. If the TL is sensible enough, and all TLs are, then it'll be fine.

 

[tennisace]

but rather just have enough of an understanding that if we give a Pokemon an intense ability, we must weaken it in some other way ... If the TL is sensible enough, and all TLs are, then it'll be fine.

I don't have time for a full post but, Krillowatt.

 

[Rising_Dusk]

Krilowatt is arguably less broken than some of the other CAPs (Colossoil, Stratagem), so even with Magic Guard making an appearance I don't think what BEEJ did was senseless or CAP-breaking.

 

[zarator]

Plus most people whined about Magic Guard because it kinda overshadowed his original concept, not because it broke Krilowatt (As R_D said, Stratagem and Colossoil were much more "suspect" than him). More in general, I subscribe everything Rising_Dusk said.

 

[bugmaniacbob]

Even though this is a stupid tangent, I feel obliged to point out that Beej was away, or ill, or something, for the entirety of the secondary ability discussion and most of the poll, by which time there wasn't exactly much that could be done about it. I still firmly believe that, had Beej been around, we wouldn't have totally ruined what I still feel would have been the best CAPmon this community has ever made, but I digress.

(I'd also like to note here that I was away for most of the secondary ability poll as well, so nobody blame me)

Anyway, to defend the list I put up there somewhat, I was only trying to see what could be done and to see if a somewhat vague concept was actually possible. The fact that I took the time to do this has nothing to do with my opinions. Personally I also feel that categorising abilities is almost entirely subjective, as others have said, and I would not support making it a concrete part of any new process to base the weighting of abilities around a single list without considering the CAP itself. Hence why I went to so much variation with the list above, and actually bothering to put which abilities were more conditional separately. I'd like everybody to note that, while we could probably keep the process without any kind of regulation on abilities, an opposite argument in the same area is also true (not literally opposite but whatever) - that it is literally impossible to judge an ability poll without both common sense from the masses and TL discretion. Any way we do this, these will have to be a part of the decision-making process in some way. So for all of you agonising over the loss of common sense, I think it is hardly likely that any list would be able to take over any more than partial regulation from TK discretion. Personally I prefer to acknowledge subjectivity. It allows more for more interesting discussion, without a blanket set of rules. There will be no "arbitrary constraints".

On the other hand, I still feel that weighting abilities with a metric would be helpful, if not for the people with common sense then for the people without any. You may say "why bother" and to be quite honest, you have a point. But I think there has to be some way we can concretely write down "Do not suggest ridiculously good abilities" without having randomuserxxx propose that Wonder Guard should be a suggested ability because we don't have one yet. To be quite honest, the ability discussions are the ones I hate most in the entire process. Sure, there is a bit of intelligent discussion, but unless the TL and the respected community point the direction very early on, I've found that it quite quickly disintegrates into "Ooh let's try this for laughs". Everybody is proposing abilities. Even in the most recent one, Voodoom's secondary ability, the trend was set very early on, and yet the thread ended inevitably with such wide shots as Hustle, Inner Focus, and Immunity being passed around, if memory serves correctly (which it probably doesn't). Why is this relevant? Here we have a common metric against which we can say, "this is the general rule, please follow it". At any rate, it could cut down on the rubbish flying. Maybe I'm just paranoid after seeing so many threads fall down to custom abilities. Remember Kitsunoh and Limber? Colossoil and Guts? Or, as we have heard so much about already, Krilowatt and Magic Guard? It would help if we didn't have to go through the tiresome process of having to beat down the floodtide every single CAP. That's all I really want to say.

As far as the actual list goes, I agree it's not perfect. I never said it was. Of course everything is highly subjective. I'm not going to answer all queries (since you all inevitably have more) but just for now, Vital Spirit/Insomnia was an honest mistake, I meant to move it up there with Limber and Immunity as per my rule for no-drawback status immunities being high effects, but I must have forgotten. And I agree that Aftermath is a poorer ability in hindsight than most of the others on the list, so I've changed that to low effect. For Liquid Ooze, Drain Punch Roobushin and Leech Seed Nattorei are seriously common, so I would not say that draining moves are 'rare' at all. So, I am adamant about keeping it as 'high'. For Stall, the effect is not totally detrimental, as it allows you to use Payback and healing moves more effectively, but it entirely depends on the moveset, so that's why I've changed it to a conditional ability. Static and Flame Body are 'uncompetitive' because you would honestly choose most of the 'high' and 'low' abilities over them. Really, they are just abilities used when you have nothing else. Their effect chance is also very low, so I've included them with Poison Hand and Poison Point. They aren't useless, but then neither is Luvdisc (entirely) and you wouldn't describe that as competitive. For Rough Skin/Iron Barbs... two of the most common physical moves generally speaking are Earthquake and Stone Edge, neither of which makes contact. Personally I'm not fond of either ability for the same reasons as Aftermath, but I'm open to further opinions on these, as there is no denying that they are both good abilities. All other opinions are welcomed, and I would strongly support a vote on these abilities or ability metrics should it come to that.

Sorry if I'm a bit incoherent, it's late here (I seem to say that a lot nowadays)

 

[ssbbm]

I think that we shouldn't tier abilities. This is because abilities are the part of the pokemon that, I believe, are most based on existing parts of the Pokemon. For example, Speed Boost + Baton Pass is much better (unless your name is Ninjask) compared to something like Speed Boost + U-Turn, or something like that.

Basically, I agree with what R_D is saying.

 

[Aerodactyl Legend]

Instead of a metric rating which abilties are better than others or whether someone thing is good/bad/broken, how bout we design a list that shows how (well) have the abilities been utilized by the current Pokemon up until now? That's the only idea I can think of. I wouldn't like it though, since many people would probably try to use it to find out which abilities haven't been used to their fullest potential yet and would try to design Caps based on that instead of the concept itself.

Though a couple of the abilities in the Uncompetitive section in BMB's metric are objectionable, we could at least keep a list like that with the "useless" abilities. Everything else is good for any new CAPs to try out themselves.

Maybe a small section for abilities made for Double Battles should be created as well.

 

[Deck Knight]

I don't think an ability tiering system is neccesary since, with a few exceptions, almost every ability depends situationally on the Pokemon and most of these abilities are obvious.

No Guard for example is drastically inferior to Compoundeyes on Pokemon who have a lot of moves in the 80-90 Accuracy range but hate getting statused. (For example No Guard would be better on a Fire/Fighting mon with Purgatory + Dynamicpunch, while Compoundeyes would be better of a Rock/Fighting mon with Stone Edge + Hi Jump Kick) If the Pokemon isn't using Dynamicpunch, Purgatory, or Zap Cannon then No Guard is a hindrance for all of the status effects it allows to hit, especially burn from Will-o-Wisp on anything physical.

Point being that context is the primary determinant of an ability's usefullness. Look at poor Maggyo. It's a Ground type with dirt-poor speed and Limber. Given its immunity to Thunder Wave, Herbivore would have done a lot more for it than Limber, considering both of them stop Stun Spore but Herbivore is obviously better (Herbivore Maggyo would have destroyed Skymin :| ). Hitmonlee and Persian however at least get some usefullness out of Limber because they're fairly quick and Hitmonlee can get some good damage output at least.

 

[bugmaniacbob]

Trying to resurrect this thread and get the ball rolling

Regarding ability metrics, I honestly don't care any more what is decided so long as there's a consensus. Personally I now feel that it isn't really worth going to all the bother of working out such a subjective measurement when common sense is easier to use and arguably more reliable. If it creates any strife further down the line then we can cross that bridge when we come to it.

Regarding the Dream World abilities, I still feel that we should hold off on adding them until there is confirmation that non-ingame 5th Gen Pokemon can actually get them (and I am assuming that we intend for these new CAPmon to be 5th Gen Pokemon, as they will be unusable in 4th Gen). I don't see how we're better off adding an ability now than later, since two abilities is ample to give us plentiful coverage over all aspects of a concept, should it be needed. Indeed, I would almost venture to say that we would be better off holding on Dream World abilities, since at that point we can assess how well the CAPmon performs in playtesting and possibly alter it, should it be needed, afterwards.

Regarding voting threads, I'd be inclined to agree with Rising_Dusk with regard to IRV + Bold Vote at the end, as this strikes the balance between lessening the gaming of the polls and also the ability to actually say something in the poll threads. But that's just me.

Regarding the sizes of egg movepools... as far as I can remember the way the last batch was calculated involved the BSR of the Pokemon in relation to the number of moves and very good moves in the movepool (broadly speaking). I'm not entirely sure whether the introduction of so many new Pokemon in the 5th Gen has altered BSR ratings (it probably has), and if it has, it would mean that the entire thing would have to be recalculated. Although, I doubt that the end result would make much difference.

I guess what I'm asking here is, would it be judicious to simply assume that the Pokemon Game Freak has introduced in the 5th generation are all balanced? (by our definition). Obviously there has been some power creep, but if they were intended to be balanced, then it seems reasonable to assume that the sizes of movepools would not increase drastically with the introduction of so many new threats. The only real change I can see is that of the old TMs and some new moves transferring to egg moves (in some cases). In fact, from what I have seen, most Gen V Pokemon have far less bloated movepools than the older Pokemon (which kind-of cancels out the ridiculous stat distributions).

Still, I did try a particularly unscientific method of working out an average egg movepool.

Ferrothorn - 8 EMs, 6 VGMs
Blaziken - 14 EMs, 7 VGMs
Breloom - 10 EMs, 5 VGMs
Tyranitar - 12 EMs, 7 VGMs
Espeon - 13 EMs, 5 VGMs
Gliscor - 14 EMs, 6 VGMs
Garchomp - 13 EMs, 5 VGMs
Politoed - 13 EMs, 4 VGMs
Conkeldurr - 11 EMs, 5 VGMs
Scizor - 10 EMs, 5 VGMs
Heatran - N/A
Dragonite - 11 EMs, 6 VGMs
Genesect - N/A
Serperior - 10 EMs, 4 VGMs
Zapdos - N/A
Excadrill - 8 EMs, 4 VGMs
Reuniclus - 8 EMs, 4 VGMs
Gengar - 12 EMs, 6 VGMs
Ninetales - 13 EMs, 4 VGMs
Kingdra - 13 EMs, 3 VGMs
Jellicent - 6 EMs, 4 VGMs
Gyarados - N/A
Ditto - N/A
Vaporeon - 13 EMs, 5 VGMs
Infernape - 14 EMs, 8 VGMs
Latios - N/A
Volcarona - 7 EMs, 3 VGMs
Thundurus - N/A
Cloyster - 12 EMs, 6 VGMs
Salamence - 10 EMs, 5 VGMs
Tentacruel - 11 EMs, 6 VGMs
Skarmory - 10 EMs, 6 VGMs
Hydreigon - 10 EMs, 6 VGMs
Starmie - N/A
Forretress - 11 EMs, 4 VGMs
Kerudio - N/A
Jirachi - N/A
Togekiss - 12 EMs, 5 VGMs
Scrafty - 11 EMs, 9 VGMs
Porygon2 - N/A
Hippowdon - 10 EMs, 6 VGMs
Alakazam - 10 EMs, 6 VGMs
Lucario - 15 EMs, 12 VGMs
Venusaur - 14 EMs, 7 VGMs
Sableye - 10 EMs, 7 VGMs
Swampert - 17 EMs, 6 VGMs
Blissey - 10 EMs, 4 VGMs
Metagross - N/A
Landorus - N/A
Darmanitan - 9 EMs, 5 VGMs

(13 N/A)

Highest EMs: 17
Lowest EMs: 6

Highest VGMs: 12
Lowest VGMs: 3

Average EMs: 8.829787234
Average VGMs: 4.382978723

Average EMs (pre-Gen V): 9.91
Average VGMs (pre-Gen V): 4.727272727

…………………..	EMs	VGMs	BSR	
Ferrothorn	8	6	257	Good
Conkeldurr	11	5	254	Good
Excadrill	8	4	295	Good
Reuniclus	8	4	238	Above Average
Jellicent	6	4	254	Good
Serperior	10	4	298	Good
Volcarona	7	3	337	Very Good
Hydreigon	10	6	396	Excellent
Scrafty…	11	9	249	Above Average
Darmanitan	9	5	271	Good
				
Bisharp…	7	4	248	Above Average
Mienshao	8	3	312	Very Good
Accelgor	10	5	254	Good
Haxorus…	10	5	338	Very Good
Chandelure	7	4	274	Good
Galvantula	7	2	257	Good
Alomomola	6	3	254	Good
Amoonguss	8	3	227	Above Average
Escavalier	8	4	232	Above Average
Emolga…...	9	3	212	Above Average
Sawsbuck	9	5	255	Good
Vanilluxe	8	5	293	Good
Swanna…...	7	0	257	Good
Cinccino	9	3	250	Good
Zoroark…	8	6	312	Very Good
Archeops	7	4	380	Excellent
Carracosta	9	3	237	Above Average
Crustle…	8	6	231	Above Average
Krookodile	10	6	296	Good
Lilligant	9	2	253	Good
Whimsicott	9	4	247	Above Average
Scolipede	6	2	248	Above Average
Seismitoad	8	3	273	Good
Samurott	8	3	286	Good
Emboar…...	10	8	276	Good
				
				
Av. top 10	8.8	5	10	
Av. Others	8.2	3.84	25	
				
Av. Above Av'ge	8.3	4.2	10	
Av. Good	8.89	4.28	18	
Av. Very Good	8.25	4.25	4	
Av. Excellent	8.5	5	2

Note that I have no idea how to program or create databases of any sort beyond basic excel, so this was mostly done manually. With regard to VGMs, I generally wavered between the existing list, tennisace's proposed list, and common sense. I don't think it makes that much difference, since I was consistent with individual moves. Due to a lack of proper usage statistics and an unwillingness to do this for every Pokemon in the game, I chose the most random list of Pokemon I could find (the Pokemon Online top 50 Pokemon in Dream World OU) and ran the necessary on them. Nothing really came of this, but I thought I'd post it here anyway in case somebody could make use of it.

The next table has data on the top 10 Gen V Pokemon according to PO, as well as 25 other Pokemon that I thought were worth recording. So, here are the total egg moves, total very good egg moves, and their BSRs. This is a bit skewed since most of them have great abilities as well, but it shows that there is absolutely no correlation between current BSR and egg movepool size at all. Well, maybe a bit. But not much. As far as 5th Gen Pokemon go, the average egg movepool is basically the same as the average 4th Gen Pokemon in Gen 4 - and since we're trying to create Gen V Pokemon it seems as though we can most easily follow whatever precedent we had before - I haven't been able to find it anywhere, but still.

Oh, and I think BSR ought to be recalculated, but that's something for another time (and probably isn't necessary).

Take from this post what you will. Let's try to get this show moving again.

 

[Deck Knight]

Conclusion:

• A maximum of two abilities on a Pokemon can be considered competitive. "Competitive" will be based on the judgement of the TL after considering community consensus. Dream World Abilities will be assumed to be released at implementation.
• Instant Run-Off Voting will be the method of polling for polls with greater than four options. The Top 3 will then go to a Bold Vote. Statistical ties will allow for a fourth option in the bold voting poll.
• Movepools will still count VGMs, however there will be no specific limit and Ability and Stats as well as Pokemon norms will be considered in selecting movepool slates. The rules for VGMs have changed somewhat in the 5th Generation and the process should aim at becoming less restrictive.

To-Do List:

Develop a PR on Movepool Process changes specifically and get better data on VGMs and their location in the 5th Generation. Once this data is obtained then progress on a better Movepool System can be made. Until then we should seek out alternatives to balance the mayhem before implementation of VGMs and the stifling after them.