Policy Review An Adjustment in Direction Part 2

HeaLnDeaL

Let's Keep Fighting
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Approved by double decker

As a result of the first adjustment in direction thread, CAP22 Kerfluffle was created for the CAP metagame, breaking away from the long-held pattern of CAPs being built to be playtested in OU. The conclusion of the first thread mandated that before CAP23 started the we, as PRC, would discuss whether or not to stay building for the CAP metagame in the future or to go back to building for OU. It is now time to have this discussion.

The first thread was a nearly yearlong excursion full of winding roads of discussions that included proposals for a number of possible "adjustments." However, the conclusion focused on the two major directions that emerged as the strongest possibilities to help frame the future of CAP. Many people argued that building and playtesting in OU would allow CAP to be more easily accessible to the Smogon competitive player base because OU was the metagame most competitive players played and understood; cutting away from OU would turn us into isolationists. Others argued that the CAP process had tried to appeal to OU players time and time again with little meaningful result while CAP metagame players had become more interested in the process than ever before and wanted a chance to build for the metagame they were the most familiar with. Many, many more arguments than these were given on how to support these two positions, but I won't bore you with all of the details. If you're dying to read a book of policy spats to get the full picture, then refer to the first adjustment thread.

There are many, many tangent conversations that can easily emerge from this OU vs CAP metagame dichotomy. However, I will ask people to refrain from going to far off the path at this time and instead focus of which metagame we wish to build new CAPmons for. If you do not have PRC access and would like to weigh in on this important topic, I strongly recommend taking some time to compose a brief but impactful application in the PRC Application thread. We should be addressing the backlog of applicants very soon.

For insight into how CAP's metagame of focus when designing new CAPs has changed over the many years of the CAP Project, it might be helpful to reread the first post of the first adjustment thread.

I don't want to make an overly long and flowery OP discussing the trials and tribulations of changing our building metagame so I will end this here and let the discussion drive the language from here on out. Below are the main points of inquiry that I wish us to address.

Should our future CAP creations be created to be playtested within an OU environment or should we building for the CAP metagame itself? How does the most recent CAP, Kerfluffle, and its creation process impact your views? Was building Kerfluffle for the CAP metagame a success or was it a distraction to the project?
 

HeaLnDeaL

Let's Keep Fighting
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I personal am curious on how building for OU saves any time? Integer Mova's above post seems to think that one building method is faster than the other, but I personally don't see any evidence of this. Last year we only had one CAP because we were bogged down with a very long PRC thread that took many twists and turns (and not because building for the CAP metagame itself took longer than building for OU). Unlike Part 1, Part 2 here is narrowed down to two clear options and there's no reason this PRC thread should last nearly as long.
 

BP

Beers and Steers
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I agree with HeaLnDeaL's last post. Building for OU doesn't actually save any time. If anything it would prolong the process because we would have to wait for a suspect ladder to be implemented and taken off just to play with our CAPs again which is anything but Convenient. With that being said, everyone should know where I stand on this issue.

I personally feel that OU is nothing more than a leash or chain to the CAP meta-game hold us back from where we truly want and need to be. I feel that Kerfluffle went wonderfully and the only reason it took so long was not only because it was a hard concept to build around but was also one of our first times not building for OU. For one of the First times I feel like CAP stepped out of its boundary zone. Then we did it again when Deck Knight decided to make a plan for updating CAPs. My point is I think that stepping out of our comfort zone helps us learn not only as individuals but also as a Community. We should continue to build and create for our OWN meta-game not some lame OU one that gets way to repetitive.
 

emma

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I believe CAP should continue to build for the CAP Metagame. Like Broken Phobias mentioned, I do believe that the OU Metagame is more of a leash than any sort of benefit. Building for the CAP Metagame gets more CAP players involved since they are building for a metagame they enjoy and play frequently. We built 21 CAPs for the OU format, but have any big time OU players ever really noticed CAP? Participated at all? I don't get why we would build for the OU Metagame but play the CAP Metagame, that doesn't make much sense to me, personally.

I too question how building for the CAP Metagame takes more time. We only had one CAP in 2016 because we had an extremely long PRC Thread about what tier CAP22 would be built for.

Build for the CAP Metagame.
 
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SHSP

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My view is gonna be a little biased based off the fact my only CAP project was Kerf, but I agree with continuing with the CAP process for the CAP meta. Kerf went beautifully in my view, and ended up with one of the most successful concepts of gen 6, and a mon that avoided being too weak or too strong as others have been when building for OU. Kerf ended ranked A on the gen 6 VR, and fell in the middle of the gen 6 caps- Mega Cruci and Caw being A+ and reg Cruci, Plas and Navi being B+. Kerf was able to find success without being absurd, and considering the full meta these CAP mons will be played in can help us avoid making something unplayably bad or terrifyingly broken. In addition, the ongoing CAP updates seem to hold to the same idea as Kerf- often times with the more major updates, the ideas of the CAP meta influenced decisions, such as Tomo keeping Haze to keep it's established role. I don't see a benefit to going back to building for OU when building for CAP lets us address a lot more possible balance issues in CAP.
 
I'm now more convinced that we should keep building for CAP and not OU. Kerfluffle turned out quite nicely without being too broken or useless, after all. As SHSP and several other users suggested, we can retain balance in the metagame if we stay with the CAP metagame.

I have to admit that the Adjustment thread was more worth it than I assumed. OU Players don't notice CAP much, anyway.

Persuaded!? Build CAP for CAP, not OU.
 

Deck Knight

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The core aspect of what we're trying to do with CAP is "learn about Competitive Pokemon [For whatever that is taken to mean]."

My own personal view has always been that CAP should be able to choose any "competitive" metagame (which I'll define as any metagame that uses canon Pokemon data and mechanics as its baseline. CAP counts, OU counts, Ubers counts, Almost Any Ability and Mix and Mega do not) and entertain concepts that would alter that metagame either to attempt a balance, explore a new niche, basically anything within concept rules.

As such I think either CAP or OU is a fine selection. There are now so many Pokemon that previous concerns people are more excited by the new ones than the new ones plus CAPs gets less impactful each generation. Ultra Beasts may have sealed that coffin entirely given they seem specifically competitively designed and push out a lot of other Pokemon.
 

Ignus

Copying deli meat to hard drive
My personal opinion is that going for OU to start out gen 7 may make more sense, seeing as how much of the metagame has been changed with the new mechanic introductions this time around. I don't think 'staying' in the CAP metagame is something particularly bad, but it should be noted that the CAP metagame is a lot less developed at the current moment than OU.

If we think building for CAP is fine despite the metagame not being completely explored yet, that's fine. But we should at least look at it a bit before deciding for sure.
 

reachzero

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It may not really surprise anyone that I believe building for OU is a better long-term option.

The biggest difference between OU and the CAP metagame right now is ease of access. Imagine that you're a new Smogon user, and you wander into a beginning CAP project. You really want to participate, but you quickly realize you don't understand the metagame and need to learn it. You pick six CAPs and jump on the ladder to try them out. Ten minutes later, you get a battle against another team with six CAPs. Sound familiar? Even if the player eventually grasps what is basically good (say, by browsing the CAP metagame subforum), he or she will have a hard time gaining actual experience, simply because the ladder activity is so dead so much of the time. Waiting for a ladder battle usually means a 10+ minute wait for me, whereas clicking on the OU ladder rarely means more than a 10 second wait. Getting into an OM (building for CAP would mean being fully resigned to being an OM) is not so bad if the ladder is very active, but when it is dead, it's extremely difficult.

Of course, it is unlikely that this will stop users from participating or voting in the CAP process. If users want to participate, they will likely do so no matter which metagame we build for. The problem is that the OU and CAP metagames are increasingly different, and it looks like the updates will make them even more different. If a player that plays exclusively OU posts in an ongoing CAP process, they are going to bring in competitive logic that is obviously valid in OU and, perhaps, ridiculous in CAP. Three attacks Zapdos is a really good set in OU, but in CAP it struggles against Colossoil, Mollux and Pyroak, and so it is hardly ever seen, for instance. This effect is even more pronounced in voting, where CAP veterans can't even respond "hey, that's OU thinking..."

The number of people who can speak intelligently about competitive OU is far, far greater than the number of people who can speak intelligently about competitive CAP, and it's much harder to get into competitive CAP. The net result of this will almost certainly be a lower quality of discussion (again, not necessarily less discussion). My concern, then, is that if we choose to continue building for CAP, much of our userbase will continue building for OU anyway, simply because it's what they know how to do.
 

Deck Knight

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To piggyback on reachzero, im my last post I stated how I feel conceptually about why we build. My preference at this point is to build for OU.

When we made Kerfluffle it was at the tail end of the last generation, with ORAS being largely stagnant. Now we're entering into a generation that still hasn't released all the Mega Stones.

Furthermore, all the CAP Updates will be incredibly fresh if we choose to build for CAP. Our metagame will nor be very settled either way, and as reach pointed out, at least on the ladder. Most of our meta gets developed through the tours.

With that background there are two divergent lines of logic:

1. We should build for CAP! Updates are new and there will be more hype for them as we go through the CAP Process.

2. We should build for OU! The CAP Updates are so new we won't have a full grasp on how they interact with each other, and new players especially won't find the meta accessible.

A smoothe CAP Process takes about 2.5 months to complete, so I think our updates meta would be settled by then. At issue is we'll be making concept submissions very early in and I don't think we can quite assess what the meta needs at that point.

As such, I think going with OU is the wiser option. Let the CAP Updates play as their own meta for a while without trying to introduce something new into a world of new. This incidentally also lets us start CAP 23 slightly sooner, since we won't need to pad time to let the metagame settle.
 
My first post intended to suggest building for OU during CAP 23 while the older CAPs settled down with their updates. After that, we could go back to the CAP meta once Alola stagnates and we get Sinnoh remakes, as we don't update existing CAPs in the middle of a generation. Newer players will likely need some time to adjust to the newly implemented updates while more experienced users work on CAP 23, as Deck Knight stated. Too many new toys can result in quick boredom.

As such, I now believe that we should build CAP 23 for OU, but work with the CAP metagame in the long run.
 
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BP

Beers and Steers
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As such, I think going with OU is the wiser option. Let the CAP Updates play as their own meta for a while without trying to introduce something new into a world of new. This incidentally also lets us start CAP 23 slightly sooner, since we won't need to pad time to let the metagame settle.
I agree with this statement. Before I said we should build for CAP but now upon realizing the updates will impact the meta-game significantly I realize that this next CAP we create should be built for OU. It is much wiser to start on a CAP based off of OU where it has become somewhat stable. It doesn't make much sense to create our next CAP off of the our own meta-game while it is "Under Construction."

In the long run I believe we should Build for CAP

However for CAP 23 we should build based off of OU
 

emma

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I can go with building CAP 23 for the OU Metagame but I still think we should build for the CAP Metagame in the longrun, for reasons stated in my first post.
 

HeaLnDeaL

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I disagree with the argument that building CAPs for OU makes them more accessible to a larger audience. Sure, in theory it opens us to a wider playtest audience but in practice I don't think the results have been all that. They've been very underwhelming.

The last CAP made for OU, Crucibelle, had it's playtest start on the night of January 11 2016. Throughout January, it garnered 2036 battles and it barely lasted until the start of February and it had only 73 playtest ladder matches in February; I'm not sure the exact end date but based on this it seems it got cut off sometime on February 1st or 2nd... That's roughly 2,100 matches during the playtest. For comparison, the month of January had 5671 non-playtest CAP metagame matches, almost 3 times as many.

Kerfluffle, on the other hand, was released on September 27 2016. For the proceeding month of October, the usage stats are, well, saved in a weird way. I can't find the number of battles as it's not saved in its usual place but it's saying Colossoil was used 9000 times. The previous month of September shows there were almost 9,000 CAP metagame ladder matches with Colo at almost 33.25% usage and 7,300 individual colo uses and the proceeding month of November shows 10,300 matches with again about 7,300 colo uses at roughly 32% usage. So, we can assume that Colo usage was relatively the same in October (the "playtest" month of Kerfluffle) but since the number of Colo individual uses spiked in October then the number of ladder matches also spiked.

I think this in itself is a huge takeaway. Quantifiable interest in playing CAP spiked during Kerfluffle when it was implemented into the CAP metagame. Interest in playing with CAP Crucibelle in the OU playtest comparatively was lower that the interest in playing with Crucibelle in the CAP metagame.

When it comes to cold hard numbers, I don't think you can argue that CAP for OU is generating more interest to the community. There ladder stats show people play the CAP metagame more than OU playtests.

Additionally, what has ended up happening multiple times in the past is that we built a CAPmon assuming that X OU mon would be a major threat only for it to have been banned by the time the CAP was actually finished making. We gave the mon X ability or X stay to counter the mon that ended up not being relevant anymore. One of the previous problems for building for OU that was brought up last thread was that OU constantly changes due to bans and that the CAP metagame has a constant 20+ mons makes it more stable than OU. I think CAP not really being affected by the recent Baton Pass ban helps to show that the CAP metagame is more stable than OU.

If we build for CAP, this is much less likely to happen because we know that the CAPmons will stay. CAP metagame usage is stacked with mostly CAP mons not just because there's noobs who use them but also because a lot of them are really good. Tomohawk and Colossoil consistently pull 30-40% usage on the top ladder where an OU mon might be lucky to get 10-15% usage in CAP. Yeah yeah, usage is not viability. Right now we have 25 mons ranked A and higher, and 10 of them are CAPmons, which is a very significant percentage considering that there are far more mons in OU than there are CAPmons. The presence of CAPmons and knowing that they won't just get banned during the middle of a CAP's creation is a reassuring measure.

I think the side that wants to build for OU ignores the facts that more people are interested in building CAPs for CAP and that the usage stats illustrate this. There is the theoretical claim that building for OU means more OU people will be interested in CAP... but time and time again we have found this not to be true.

I do not agree with building CAP 23 for OU. CAP 23 and future CAPs should be build for the CAP metagame because that's where our community lies. Also, what is up with so many people editing their posts and flip flopping.
 

Deck Knight

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Reachzero's argument wasn't really about playtest accessibility, it was about process accessibility - that is, appeal not to top tier OU Players but to new people joining the discussion.

I do think comparing playtest usage and activity stats is valuable for a post-analysis, but in this case it's the first project of a generation, there should be substantial interest based on that alone.

I would also caution that CAP is not immune to being trapped in time. Had we started either a CAP or OU process three months ago, we'd find our discussions of Pheromosa and Mega Meta as threats equally outdated if we were holding the playest now. Whether we shoukd also tier separately to avoid this is important but outside the scope of this thread. Granted the CAP Meta was the more stable of the two because of the impact CAPs have on usage, but nonetheless our discussions around MMeta wouldn't just be "CAP Partners well with Cyclohm, ReflectHawk(no longer a thing after updates), and Pyroak."

While reachzero did persuade me in his direction, I don't believe choosing CAP for our first project necessarily relegates us to an OM either. I think either is sound but OU is more appropriate at this phase of the SM and CAP Metagames.
 

HeaLnDeaL

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I don't want to turn this into a back and forth, but I feel Kerfluffle's creation accessibility was great. It brought a bunch of new people from the CAP metagame and involved them directly into the CAP creation process. I don't think any gen6 CAP built for OU can say the same; I feel like with all the others we had only a few OU people leading around a bunch of casual players. I don't think Volkraken through Crucibelle made OU people want to play CAP and I don't think they made CAP people want to play OU.

I really don't think OU is the key to accessibility anymore. Stealing a page from part 1 of this PRC thread, I think it was jas who argued that there's a competitive baseline of knowledge that let's people jump into most other similar tiers. Someone good at OU is perfectly able to spend the hour or so to get to know the CAPmons enough to be able to positively contribute to a discussion about building for the CAP metagame. A few CAP metagame players have been casually learning about OU for many CAPs in order to participate in making CAPs for OU. And it can go both ways. There's no reason why someone who plays UU well can't jump in and contribute to make something for CAP or for OU.

It's not really about which metagame is more accessible and I don't think the argument that OU is more accessible has have been successfully proven in practice. It's about which metagame has the people who are devoted and willing to actually play and learn from the CAPs. I don't think creating a CAP for OU to exist for only 2 weeks in a playtest fosters a community of development.
 

snake

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I made this argument last thread, but building for the CAP Metagame retains new players a lot better than building for OU. When someone joins in a CAP Process and learns the metagame for which the product will inevitably resides, they're likely to stick around. I believe expanding the CAP Metagame is a very good way to expand the userbase for the CAP Project. People go to Showdown to play in battles, and that's where we can easily talk to people about process and stuff. For a new person, talking to a staff member is much better than stumbling onto giant OPs with all the rules and guidelines. It's also easier to stumble into the CAP Project Room than on the CAP section on forums and find all the relevant threads, and even if you get there, you have to be at least familiar with general rules to not make a post in the wrong place. So if we build for the CAP Metagame, we can pick up more people and more importantly keep them with us, rather than having people go "well that process was fun, back to OU!" and then maybe they miss the next CAP Process because they aren't keeping up with CAP.

Personally, I enjoyed building Kerfluffle for the metagame I was familiar with, and we made a nice, balanced product for our metagame that fit its concept well. I'd like to give it another shot. If we do build for OU, I'm more prepared to learn the target metagame, but for me, the CAP Metagame is the way to go.
 

Deck Knight

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One thing I don't want to get lost in the discussion is that CAP is about the journey, not whatever quantititative metrics or absolute playerbase retention we get out of it.

I'm fairly confident that regardless of what metagame we choose we will be able to generate quality concepts and good discussions. I just want to be sure we're choosing a meta for the right reason and not for some desired quantitative result.
 

snake

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One thing I don't want to get lost in the discussion is that CAP is about the journey, not whatever quantititative metrics or absolute playerbase retention we get out of it.

I'm fairly confident that regardless of what metagame we choose we will be able to generate quality concepts and good discussions. I just want to be sure we're choosing a meta for the right reason and not for some desired quantitative result.
Right now, the interest comes most concentrated from the CAP Metagame, so it makes sense for the CAP Project proper and the metagame to speak back and forth with each other: with more contributors from the metagame creates more interest in the project and better quality posts from new people in the CAP Project, and more interest in the project lets the metagame thrive. Really, in this sense it's a waste NOT to take advantage of this symbiosis between project and metagame. And this isn't me trying to further some agenda for the metagame. I really want both the project and the metagame to grow and to see more activity on both forums. Playerbase retention isn't a stat we should track just to say "we have X people contributing" - it's something we need to think about to bring new people coming into the project and to stick around so we can keep the project growing (rather than eventually stagnating or worse case scenario, dying out).

Basically, imo creating for the CAP Metagame lets project and metagame evolve with each other, and it targets a playerbase that can be retained for future cap discussions AND one that's highly invested in CAP discussions (unlike OU, from what I can tell). And along the way, we'll get great discussion and concepts.

I do believe that the CAP Metagame is the way to go for the future. If we want to build CAP23 for OU that's fine, but really we shouldn't downplay how well each "side" of CAP can help each other out.
 

Drapionswing

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First of all I think we should build CAP 23 for the CAP Metagame.

I just don't understand why we'd ever go back, Kerfluffle's process went smoothly even with the original leader leaving. There was about as much discussion as you could expect from a concept about pivotting. All the reasoning behind going back to OU literally makes just about as much sense as us going back.

So you want us to build for the OU metagame to allow a different selection of people to potentially participate with potentially educated posts, and drag the cappers away from the cap metagame to again potentially play OU or give uneducated posts? I don't get it. Just because we build for OU new people aren't going to go out of their way to play OU or CAP unless they're looking for a long term investment in cap. At that point however, we may as well just make ours caps for our metagame. There is no reward for paticipating in a CAP proccess, no one cares enough until they do and when they do we should be encouraging play of CAP instead of OU who gives less than no fucks about us.

The quality of the CAP is going to take a hit. CAP and OU are two different metagames, the CAP isn't going into the OU metagame where lo zapdos and clefable are actually good. There are things in OU that need more consideration than in CAP and because of that I just don't understand why people want to build a CAP in OU. We build a CAP that's effectively meant to take on offensive zapdos, then it gets barely touched in the pointless playtests and finally my favourite part: we release the pokemon in a completely different metagame.

Building for OU is just us taking a step forward with kerfluffle and 2 steps back with Cap23.

Updates definitely won't disrupt the cap process either by the time the meat of the actual process gets underway, the meta would already be forming to an extent. This isn't a new generation of pokemon.

Why do people hate the damn cap metagame so much? Why is segregating the process and the metagame a thing people want? Even though the process will always affect the metagame.
 

Quanyails

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If CAP went back to the old process, newcomers to CAP would discover that CAPs are built for OU, playtested for a few weeks in OU, and retire for the rest of their existence in a different metagame. To join a project that requires several months of development for several weeks of payoff is unrewarding. In addition, no one joins CAP to make experimental disruptions to OU now. Other Metagames and pet mods fulfill that role better than CAP. People come to CAP to build new Pokemon and battle with new Pokemon! The CAP metagame is required for the latter part. CAP is attractive because it's different enough from OU but familiar enough to get involved.
 

BP

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I personally feel very indecisive about how we should build CAP 23. Both options seem to have a number of Pros and Cons that both work out for me. So I'm going to wing this post and just write about whatever comes to mind regarding Pros and Cons for each topic.


Why we should build CAP 23 for OU:
By the time we get around to CAP 23 it will be early to mid July. OU would and has become more stable since the meta-game just started and we are all thankful for that. That doesn't mean the process will go smoothly however as both Greninja forms are still available in the Tier. We don't know what will be suspected which can cause some issues with building. This is not however a big enough issue to deter us from building for OU.

Why we should build CAP 23 for CAP
Some of the "Kiddos" aren't all that familiar with OU and frankly don't give a damn about the meta-game. The only reason why I could see them caring is for potential bans stuff like that. Also based on last project and how it went it is obvious that building for our own CAP meta-game is just the easiest and most note worthy decision. As a community we can not only work to our best capabilities but also the content we create will be A+ material. It just makes sense that build for CAP is the best decision.

So I wrote this on a the fly just to brainstorm from both perspectives and to be completely honest WE ARE BUILDING FOR CAP. It is the best option we have at this point. It will go faster and will increase the likely hood of us making something a lot better content wise. Not to mention, think about how much FUN we are going to have if we build for CAP. Building for OU is honestly just a poor decision on everyone's part if we decide to do so.


This is supposed to be FUN so lets make it FUN by building for our own Tier!

Building for OU is just us taking a step forward with kerfluffle and 2 steps back with Cap23.
 

reachzero

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People come to CAP to build new Pokemon and battle with new Pokemon! The CAP metagame is required for the latter part.
This is the crux of the argument, in my opinion. If most of the people involved in the CAP process were most interested in battling with the CAPs we make, I would argue wholeheartedly for building for the CAP metagame. I am not at all surprised at the numbers cited by HeaL; the full CAP metagame is a lot "cooler" than a playtest ladder will ever be, and coolness is what makes a ladder popular. Where I disagree is that I believe that far more people participate in the CAP process than in the CAP metagame, and that the vast majority of these participants do not regularly play CAP. Ladder activity is crazy slow, yet a competitively significant process poll can draw 200+ votes.

I personally really enjoy the CAP metagame, which at this point in my career I probably play as much if not more than I play OU. That being said, it is ridiculously difficult to even find games of CAP, so I find it hard to believe that interest in the CAP metagame is booming.

I recognize that there are advantages, substantial advantages, to building for the CAP metagame.

As HeaL noted accurately, CAP is far more stable than OU, as the dominant Pokemon in OU at the moment are on shaky ground--no one knows if Protean Greninja will be with us for the whole generation, for instance, but my bet would be against it. Tomohawk and Colossoil aren't going anywhere.

Repeated typing is the scourge of CAP, and an inevitable result of building CAPs independently. CAP disproportionately prefers Poison, Electric and Fighting types, which has brought us to our proverbial metagame weaknesses to Ground, Psychic and Flying. Building for CAP would help us intentionally address this. The same could be said of roles; I doubt we would have so many CAPs with Stealth Rock and/or Rapid Spin if they were built for full CAP.

That being said, I think one side benefit of building for OU would be related to optics: it might not drag great OU players into CAP, but it would certainly drag CAP players into OU, which would help our user base a ton in terms of community credibility. There have always been both OU players and "pure" CAP users in the CAP community; at this point I feel the former has almost completely exited, and I fear that building for full CAP will make the split complete. CAP will have more in common with Mix and Mega as a user base then it does with OU, and that means marginalization.

As a final point, I strongly believe in consistency of process. If all future CAPs are to be built for the CAP metagame, so should CAP 23. Nothing is more damaging than when the community doesn't know what to expect, so establishing precedent and a clear process is critical. I don't like building for full CAP because the CAP project is about the process, not about the metagame, and building for the metagame makes the process subservient to the metagame. Even so, I believe we ought to choose one or the other and hold up it consistently, since vacillation is more damaging than either option.
 

Deck Knight

Blast Off At The Speed Of Light! That's Right!
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Top CAP Contributor Alumnusis a Top Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus
I'm not convinced we need to be binary on this, i.e. we must make a decision for an entire generation's worth of projects right here, right now. This thread is about our *next* project.

When we made what became Crucibelle we had a thread much like this one to discuss how we would go about adjusting our process to make a Mega CAP possible. SM is a new generation with several all-new mechanics and contours like Terrain Wars. As I stated previously, Kerfluffle was made during a stagnant ORAS OU where there was little left to explore or learn.

Which brings me to this point:

CAP should take project participants out of their comfort zone.

Always making for CAP is the easiest and also laziest choice. In fact since our PRC is heavily made of diehard CAPpers by design the sell to stay within our own metagame will always be easy - too easy.

As I said in my first post, I am open to building for just about any stable competitive (canon baseline) metagame. Were I the sole decider, our next 3 CAPs would be OU, CAP, and Ubers - just to see what concepts people would submit for it.

Flexibility as a project is vital to our identity. As I said I am not opposed to any choice we might make for the mext project, but this thread is not and cannot appropriately be the place we make an entire generation's worth of build decisions.

I believe we will retain the most value, adherance to our principles, and maintenance of our identity by making our first SM CAP for SM OU. As I said, I'm not the deciding voice, but I would implore the PRC to consider not making the easy choice here and forcing ourselves to not retreat into our own bunker at the outset of a brand new generation.
 

HeaLnDeaL

Let's Keep Fighting
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I think having a thread like this asking what metagame to build for before each and every CAP would be an exhausting bureaucratic process where very little good could come out. I agree with reachzero that consistency is best.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't necessarily be taken out of their comfort zone in CAP but to turn around and say that an easy choice is a bad choice just doesn't make sense. Making CAPs for the CAP metagame would not be "retreating into our own bunker." It would be taking the step to help all of our resources converge into a cohesive project. It would be taking the step to build a community.

As someone who participated in all of the CAP creations last gen, I was taken out of my comfort zone each and every CAP. Each concept proved to have unique problems and each time we all had to adapt. There is nothing easy about building for CAP just like there's nothing easy about building for OU. The concepts are the journey and the adventure, not the metagame. The metagame we choose, however, still have very real and lasting impacts and choosing the CAP metagame consolidates our resources and fosters a community.
 

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