Other Branching Out to Different Metas for Future CAP Projects

Discussed this with Quanyails on Discord.

Ever since SM were released back in November 2016, I've been curious to try new metagames besides the standard singles, such as Doubles, Monotype, or even the two retro generations available on Virtual Console. There are other options available, but the first two in particular seem to have big enough of a player base to work. The Updates took a while because the first 11 CAPs were outdated by a whopping three generations, and Showdown consequentially only released Pajantom (CAP 23) this year. Do any of you believe that branching out could allow the CAP Project to learn more about several other legal formats, rather than limiting ourselves to a standard OU-based metagame? We could get even more CAP projects per year, as opposed to creating only two in that given duration.

Generations of Pokémon games are only getting shorter nowadays, as USUM have been confirmed to be the final main 3DS games for this franchise. Working with metas outside of our comfort zone every now and then would help create some great Pokémon for competitive gameplay in various legal formats.
 

nyttyn

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I honestly don't think this is a good idea. The only reason we can get away with making pokemon for CAP now is because a lot of our playerbase was already playing the meta, making the conversion relatively painless. That's not necessarily (and likely is not) the case for the other tiers, meaning that we would have to announce this sort of thing well in advance so people can read up on the tier, and then wind up bogged down each stage with people having to do research, or having to debunk incorrect assertions (of which there would doubtlessly be many more of, given many of our users will likely be unfamiliar with the tier in question). Not only would this cause a messy process, it would also cause a longer one, meaning that would get fewer CAPs out and nor more.

I also do not believe the solution to these hurdles is "running multiple CAPs at the same time." We do not have the manpower nor userbase for that sort of endeavor.

I'm also not fond of the potential headaches this could cause down the line for the CAP Metagame, between having to potentially wrest with boosting up a CAP to CAP-meta status without overshooting the mark, or having to tone down a cap designed for ubers, anything goes, or doubles. Revisions take awhile, and they'll just take increasingly longer the further a pokemon is from CAP-meta levels of power - and god forbid we overshoot and have to run another revision, lest we wind up in some horrendous cycle of power creep.

so yeah basically I don't think this is a good idea. It'd make things take longer, be a mess, and potentially cause issues for the metagame down the line, which is no longer an inconsequential concern.
 
Hey nyttyn, thanks for the reply! When I talked to my fellow user QxC4eva aka Tomomon on Discord yesterday, I came to realize that working on multiple CAP Projects or making them for metagames outside of standard Singles metas (aka OU and CAP) won't work very well, if they would even work at all. Other than that, I don't have much else to say right now. Whoever wants to lock this thread can feel free to do so until I (or even someone else) can come up with an idea to solve this.

EDIT: Thanks for the correction, HeaL.
 
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HeaLnDeaL

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I changed the thread title to mention "different metas" rather than "other metas" since all of the metas in the OP mentioned were still official metas, not Other Metas like hackmons or whatnot.
 

LucarioOfLegends

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Its really an interesting question in all honestly, but I do have some thoughts about it. I personally think specifically building CAPs for these different metagames is a terrible idea, especially if we are doing one along side the standard one. It puts way too much strain on the community if we do multiple things at one time (thank you CAP Updates and CAPTT for showing this), and I'm not sure the people who usually lead the discussions on these projects would be as informed about metagames such as Doubles and UU. I'm not saying that we wouldn't be able to educate ourselves in it, but I would take time that I don't believe we currently have.

I think if we are to have different metagames, I think we shouldn't specifically build CAPs for them. CAP LC worked because we already had a whole bunch of theorectical baby CAPs finished at the time to insert into the metagame and it worked very nicely. Of course, there are now users in the Prevo section who are posting submissions that are more competitive in nature, but that is mostly due to the meta's development. If we are to dabble in these different metas, it should be a natural transition from CAP OU to CAP Whatever. That would likely mean that CAP Doubles would be first on the chopping block for this kind of PRC stuff, but thats just a tangent.

Keep in mind currently, I do not believe we have the time and numbers to fully invest in this idea. Its physically not possible at the moment in my opinion, but this is more of my thoughts about it when we reach that point.
 
Just a quick thought here because I'm in the middle of stuff, but I have a fear in particular about building for Monotype. I feel like the way that would work out would end up being 'Give Type X a mon that fills a niche / fixes a weakness of that type,' and we can already accomplish that (and have, a la Stratagem) without leaving the OU metagame.

This kind of branches into a different consideration of mine. Fundamentally, to get some worth out of a project like this, we would need to be building not just for a different meta, but for a style of play that is inherently radically different from Singles 6v6. UU and the lower tiers don't particularly seem that different from an OU setup; we'd just end up balancing for a different power level. Monotype has the concern I mentioned above, in that we can already address it within the scope of OU. That basically just leaves us with Doubles. And I won't lie, I think that's an interesting concept. However, this drastically reduces the scope of the question to "Should we do other metas?" to "Should we do Doubles?" And I think fundamentally most people do want to see a CAP for Doubles eventually, but that can be addressed time and time again when people think the project is ready for that.

In sum, my grievances aren't particularly about project efficiency or output quality, but rather on the fact that with one exception, we can already achieve anything we'd want to do in other metas, in OU, making the shift unnecessary and cumbersome.
 
Hmm... yeah, the only metagame that would even work with anything CAP-related besides standard singles would be Doubles, and even then CAP Doubles is pretty obscure compared to Doubles OU. That doesn't help the idea of a Doubles CAP because only a few would want to play it, and said CAP design has the possibility of becoming either broken or useless in OU Singles.
 

Bughouse

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This topic comes up every few years... Stratos and I tried to do a CAP in the doubles forum a while ago. It was interesting at first and then fizzed out even as we tried to carry it. there really just isn't enthusiasm to do CAPs outside of the CAP forum. If people wanted to do it, they'd come here.

And as for doing it here but for a different meta... that just doesn't seem to make sense to me as CAP only just recently decided to start building for the all-CAP singles metagame, which seems to be working fine.

reference: http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/doubles-cap-project-thread-stage-8-stat-limits.3519485/
 
Wait, an attempt at a Doubles CAP actually happened?! It's unfortunate to see that you and Stratos had to shut it down due to the lack of motivation, though. As a result, I guess even working with Doubles is a bit too much, and it would be safest to work with the main (Singles) all-CAP metagame. I figured this wouldn't work and didn't realize that this problem already existed.
 

Birkal

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Yeah, I think this is one of those things where it looks really cool on paper, but just isn't feasible. I think Stratos and Bughouse did absolutely the right thing in attempting to do it within their own forum. Heck, I'd even be fine with "loaning" out the CAP forum to another community to try it out.

The real reason we haven't done this (or explored it recently) is because no one has really been interested in it. If a community approached us at large to find some commonground, then we'd actually be able to have a discussion about it. But as it stands, this is sort of just... theorymon about theorymon.
 

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