Policy Review CAP Power Creep

[spoo]

Was dming quziel about this and he articulated some thoughts I've been having for a while, namely relating to the strength of existing CAPs and the strength at which we release new CAPs. Here's the gist: we release our CAPs too strong, we buff them too strong, and we impair our design space for future CAPs as a result. I don't think this current trend is sustainable for us.

Hemogoblin was released wildly OP, perhaps because of HOME on the horizon, but OP nonetheless. Chuggalong's process revolved largely around how to hard-counter (or at least not lose to) Hemogoblin, Chuggalong was released wildly OP as a result, and needed us to literally invent a new nerf process to handle it fast enough. You could say the same about Saharaja's process –– needing to be a Ground-type that could beat the then-OP Venomicon, and be strong enough to compete with Equilibra, and then of course being OP on release. I'm already seeing some conversations about how CAP 35 needs a typing that can beat Chuggalong.

This continuous power creep has a direct and obvious harm on the meta, an oft-ignored harm on project optics, and a less obvious harm on future CAP processes. Given the strength of Cresceidon and Arghonaut, a new defensive Water-type is a fairly hard sell. Cresceidon and Hemogoblin are both nuts into offense, ultimately limiting our design space in that way. Making a mon that utilizes priority as a major part of its kit feels sort of bad in a Hemogoblin and Chuggalong centric meta. A new defensive Steel is going to be forced to compete with Equilibra and now Kitsunoh, which frankly I think overshot its buff quite a bit. This of course brings up the issue of buff processes and their unintended contribution to power creep (no, buffs should not be hitting the A ranks, this is a matter of policy not opinion). The more hyper-strong stuff we release, the harder we're making it for ourselves in the future.

Whenever there's an OP element in the meta, the CAP process tends to hyperfixate on that OP element. Snael with Zygarde, Hemogoblin with Baxcalibur (and HO generally), Chuggalong with Hemogoblin, and many more. Usually the end result is that we're irrelevant after the OP element is removed from the meta, or we end up OP ourselves. Ironically, the processes we've put in place to deal with this issue –– the Post Play Lookback, actual nerf processes, and now "quicknerfs" prior to the scheduled PPL –– have made us sort of nonchalant about releasing stuff OP, because well, we can just nerf it down later. But in practice, this doesn't always happen. Nerfs take time, and the bar for needing one has been set high. We've ended up with a lot of stuff in the realm of "probably a bit too strong but not quite OP enough to nerf." There are currently 10 CAPs in the A ranks, though I'd argue it's closer to 12 given Necturna's and Kitsunoh's recent surge. SS has 5, SM has 7. The meta's more dominated by CAPs than potentially ever before. Having a meta that's distinct from OU with many top-tier CAPs isn't inherently a bad thing –– but it shouldn't come at the cost of meta health, optics, future design space, strain on the meta council and tournaments, and accelerating the already-inevitable power creep.

I'm not really sure where this discussion will go, and honestly I don't really have the time to lead it myself, but I wanted to at least get the ball rolling outside of #prc. Quziel suggested in my dms a "mass nerf," maybe a minor BST or movepool hit to the top ~5 CAPs, so I suppose that's an option. Another option is just practicing restraint, especially in the Movesets stage where things tend to get broken. Maybe we need a cultural reset: throw away the idea that the best way to balance a CAP is to "release OP and nerf down," and accept that not every CAP needs to hit the A+ rank to be a success. Maybe we "snap" CAPs out of the gen to counteract power creep. Or maybe, we do none of these things. Anyways, that's all I've got for today, happy posting.

 

[Brambane]

My response to this is CAP should be more fluid and invested in the long-term adjustment of CAPs as the process.

If we overshoot, as we did with Hemogoblin, Chuggalong, and I agree Kitsunoh, it should take as long to adjust them and we should be more open to a harsher nerf. If the community feels like we over-nerfed, we should be open to a slight adjustment to compensate. We have the ability to modify our CAPs allowing us that degree of control which is not present in OU or most other formats, we shouldn't be afraid to lean on that.

What we want to do is to make a CAP that feels fair, viable, and balanced. But that is a hard needle to thread, especially in a community where different people want different outcomes and appearences of the metagame. For example, I disagree with the emphasis on final product optics, so that affects how I view decisions in the process. I am also more open to something being OP upon release if we act quickly and think that the new policy to emergency nerf Chuggalong was a great call, but I know a lot of people will disagree with that too. I don't think we should inherently go for "release OP and nerf down" all the time, but I do think we should not be afraid and shouldn't wait too long to nerf down when something does release OP.

I think what we can all agree on is that a current project shouldn't fixate on fixing the mistakes of a previous one. Chuggalong definitely did this, as did Saharaja, and I would argue Cresceidon was answering a larger metagame change instated by Hemogoblin. The solution to this is:
1. Release weaker CAPs, or rather, CAPs where high viability isn't always a priority or lack of high viability isn't seen as failure
2. Be quicker and more aggressive about nerfs to prevent a CAP from dominating discussion and, at large, the metagame

 

[Samirsin]

First of all, let's remove Knock Off from Venomicon, second of all:
CAP processes always give too much, I don't remember who said "It's better to give too much first and then take away", but why are we giving it that many tools from the beginning? Also why depend on "we can remove it later" if sometimes that later takes a lot of time (not currently tho, buffs and nerf have been happening quite fast recently).

As much as I'd love lower Viability CAPs as Brambane suggests, since most of the CAP folks are more from the competitive side, it won't be widely accepted and will ask for a buff or that CAP won't be used (see pre-Sketch Necturna), and that will become a cycle again.

What would a mass buff/nerf cause? Desestabilization, and then we'll have people asking to revert the buffs and then they are reverted but now they are too OP so they are nerfed and then...

However, I need to say, this is a very common issue with a lot of games lately, you make it powerful enough to be relevant, people hate it for being OP; you make it not as powerful or relevant, people hate it for being weak.

I have seen this in a loooot of games. CAP has an advantage in terms of it can nerf/buff constantly, but we need to find a sweet spot, however powercreep and neophilia will always exist if CAP wants to stay relevant.

But also I feel it's weird to be constantly in the buffing-nerfing cycle. I am in a very weird position of "I want all CAPs to ve viable" and "If they were viable in their original gen, that's enough".

And what's the answer? Honestly, I think what all the other games do: embrace the powercreep and not trying to fix past mistakes, but focusing more on what's going on now and being more cautious with future projects.

 

[Amamama]

As you said there are several issues compounding the continued power creep in CAP.
The first is inherent to the CAP process and is likely not easily remedied.
Every single competitively viable Mon added to the Meta, has the potential to push the needle just a bit further.
Game freak isn't going to significantly reduce the number of available mons even though dexit exists now.
This leads to a situation, where for every viable Mon you have two, three mons at a similar Powerlevel, that will fall out of the meta. The list isn't going to get shorter and since CAP tries to release at OU Powerlevel, they have to be better than those two or three mons that fall out of favor every time.
That however should only gradually move the needle. 4-5 caps aren't a lot compared to the amount of new mons we get each gen.

The first issue that emphasizes this natural trend is the release of initially overturned CAPs.
If the meta is strong we'd rather err on the side of caution and release a Mon too strong to Nerf it down later.
I don't really see an issue with overshooting a CAP initially, bc it is much easier to adjust the Powerlevel down, than try to increase viability with a buff (something I'll touch upon later).
This then interacts with the third issue.
It is fairly hard to gauge a mons Powerlevel beforehand and for that reason we always try to aim high.

I think a viable option to decrease the speed of power creep in CAP, would be to generally aim lower in viability.
Yes a CAP should be good enough on release, that a Playtest with it actually happens with it on teams. But a CAP doesn't have to be designed to stand the test of time. If a CAP ends it's release gen in C rank it should be fine. The aim should be, not to release a Mon that will fall out of ranks the second we have a meta shift.
An option to achieve this would be to be much more strict with Movesets, an issue I could see having its own PRC.

But atm the reality is we overshoot even the A ranks, which given the tools we have to trim a CAP after release shouldn't be an issue, but the next problem we have is if a Nerf is due it is very often light handed only removing the obviously broken elements of a CAP without immediately touching less egregious options. That though leaves a lot of caps just below the level of broken and still within reach of the top tiers.
I think another tool we can deploy to keep power creep in check is nerfing more radically, especially when it comes to movepools and stats.

Now on top of the new mons we add each gen, we decided it would be good to give the older CAPs that had fallen out of favor a new lease at life.
From the start I was against the buff process.
While it does have its merits in allowing new staff to dip their toes into leadership, its implications for the meta were always dire and the idea of making all of Most Caps available to be used without hampering the user was ill conceived.
As I said if you add one Mon another or even more will fall out of favor.
Kitsunoh has been buffed, when are we gonna Buff Pajantom who has fallen into that same dark pitch Necturna and Kit have been in for quite some time. And how long before you return to Kit bc it is again the worst ghost type in cap?
The recycling of caps is a Sisyphean task, that only helps to congest the meta with viable CAPs and adds significantly to the power creep.
I think all the well intended "let's buff it so it's usable but not highly viable" is bullshit. Why waste time buffing a Mon if it isn't realistically changing its viability?
But then why try to buff a CAP into viability if another CAP will just replace it as unranked and unusable.
I think the first and easiest step to slow power creep is to retire the buff process entirely, especially now that there's a serious attempt at establishing CAP UU. Instead of buffing old CAPs we should let them evolve naturally, some might resurface (look at Malaconda) and if not we can have a second CAP meta or just fond memories of these old bastards.

The second easily achieved option I think is retiring the moveset stage from the process.
Defining moves sorta has replaced it and the moves a CAP usually uses come from this stage. Later additions during Movesets at best are off sets, usually turn out as bloat and at worst become an element that has to be nerfed off later.
If the moveset stage should be kept, I think it should be with the goal of consolidating defining moves with all the info we have from later stages and with a clear rule of establishing one moveset only (as you would find it on the smog dex, so 5 to 7 moves are fine) unless the concept calls for more variety.

At the same time I think we could relax flavor movepools a bit and let lesser off sets happen naturally (still should be scrutinized, but I think minor competitive additions here are likely less volatile than those added in Movesets.

 

[dex]

There are currently 10 CAPs in the A ranks, though I'd argue it's closer to 12 given Necturna's and Kitsunoh's recent surge. SS has 5, SM has 7. The meta's more dominated by CAPs than potentially ever before.

This is a terrible way to think about power creep. This metric is extremely meta-dependent. 3 CAPs have come out in Gen 9, surely just those 3 are not that cause for SV having so many more good CAPs? I think it is more coincidence than anything that many CAPs have come up from the depths this generation. Necturna didn’t get anything special that it didn’t have before due to any individual buff. Malaconda didn’t just suddenly become viable because it woke up with Grav Apple. To use other examples, Arghonaut was barely viable in DLC 1 SS CAP, and really only started seeing more play once Kyurem left. I don’t see how that could be considered power creep when it was a completely meta-caused result. If you want to talk about power creep, talk about it as it relates to the process. Bringing up the fact that the CAP VR has a lot of good CAPs on it doesn’t mean anything with regards to power creep because it’s a completely meta-dependent system.

You say that CAP has had too much power creep. Fine, I can see that. But so does OU. This generation’s OU is hyper-specialized. CAPs are, by design, hyper-specialized and very good at their meta-related role. The CAP process is therefore much more attuned to the type of Pokémon that is good in SV than any other generation. Therefore, I think power creep in SV CAP is more a product of SV OU being… kinda shit. If you want to do something about that, the only feasible solution would be some kind of enforcement of moderation, some way to define and measure power budget. What that looks like, I have no idea; I am not even convinced by the OP that doing anything is necessary since I really think this is more of a generational issue than it is an issue with CAP. But if you want to combat power creep, that’s the only option I see being effective. Everything in moderation.

I will also say that, if anything is to be done, a mass nerf is a truly, truly awful idea. There’s no way that that is ever done cleanly or effectively. Talk about just dismantling a metagame for barely any reason. The fact that this was even considered is extremely worrying about the power leadership wields. Do not do that.

Also, I think it’s time to kill the buff process entirely. The outcome is either disappointing or meta-changing, and since the latter seems to be undesirable, there’s no point in continuing it. Hand out a few moves here and there for generational updates and do nothing more.

 

[Earthflax]

some of my yap from #prc

Re Chugg and PPL: We didn’t go far enough in PPL and not to doompost but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a nerf process by the end of CAPCL. Think there’s a lot to take away regarding PPL from Chugg especially. Democratizing PPL is fine but PPL is a way to fix the mon in a way that is more metagame focused compared to the process itself, and shit like -7 Speed (which changes, what, 3 matchups?) being even slated on a PPL primarily aimed at competitive reduction is absolutely insane to me, especially on a mon that can feasibly run legitimately only one set and be just as potent. That was a lot of Chugg hate agenda just to say that we should be a lot more aggressive with how we approach PPL, and if a mon enters the meta at A+ or higher we shouldn’t be shying away from pruning shit from it just because it’s not explicitly broken.

Generally I agree with quz that all our caps just need to be usable, not necessarily viable. Processes should be approached from the perspective of learning something new rather than trying to fine tune something to drop into an already volatile metagame as is. The fear of a mon being dead on arrival has created the 3 most broken CAPs on release - Chugg, Hemo, Libra - and has played into the overbuff of Pyroak and its subsequent reign of terror. 35 should be an ultimatum on this kind of approach - 2 of the 3 SV CAPs caught nerfs and the third is a borderline top 5 mon in the meta right now. I’d go as far as to say that if we end up making another broken mon then this process needs an overhaul of some sort.

I agree that this is a massive problem. Between new CAPs, normal mons power creep and the almost-overlapping nature of the process schedule, it's only going to get worse. I'm not really going to muse on why CAP power creep is the case, because to a large extent it boils down to two things - 1) contributors generally want to see CAPs be good at any cost, be it implicitly or explicitly; 2) our mechanisms for balancing CAPs after 1.0 release are not good enough.

What I will delve into real quick is the point of the CAP process as a whole: it's to learn, to learn in an environment we control in the context of a game we all love (at times). There is a reason that we ask questions at every stage of the process. There is a reason that every concept submission must be accompanied with Questions to be Answered. While I wouldn't go as far as to say that this goal is not being kept in mind in recent processes, it does bear noting when you look at how the discourse around the process has changed.

relevant from Darek

I've been thinking of CAP processes as kind of a 2-dimensional space between concept fulfillment and viability lately
[2:28 PM]
I think there's a lot of nuance when there's an opportunity cost trading between the two
But that falls apart quickly when the concept is attaining viability(Hemogoblin) or is trivially satisfied early into the process(Chuggalong)
...
I think if there's not much left concept-wise people turning to viability does result {i}n us basically saying
[2:31 PM]
"We should make sure we don't lose to Hemo"

Take the difference between Chromera and Chuggalong. Chromera was probably the first process where I paid attention to every single stage. Though the end product was and is not particularly compelling, the concept was deep, the process ended with a lot of growth, and we learned a lot. Granted, that is my own personal experience, and those who were around for, and participated in, CAP29 might feel differently, but compare it to Chuggalong. Half of Chugg's process was during God Emperor Hemoblius meta, and once the rather shallow concept was fulfilled the focus immediately turned to viability, often in explicitly contradictory ways. We set aside Booster Speed Valiant as an example of offensive counterplay and made the Chugg neutral to its most common attacking moves. We established that certain bulky Steel types should be examples of defensive counterplay and gave it two-move coverage that deletes all of them. What I ask you, the reader, is what did we learn from Chuggalong? That a mon explicitly tooled for the use of one of the best moves in the game will use an item that is synergistic with said move? That a minmaxed mon with incredible comprehensive coverage to beat all counterplay can beat its counterplay? Clearly, there is a difference between this approach and that of preceding CAPs.

Now that that gripe is over, let's move to how processes can serve as a tool of learning as opposed to a specialized injection into the metagame. Quziel has spoken at length about this, and I completely agree with and will defer to his standard of "usable" versus "viable" - not every CAP needs to be good, frankly. Not every CAP needs to be good in the same way that not every mon is good at all times. Nothing more to it. Furthermore, we should not be scared of a mon being bad on release - learning from the chosen concept is far more important than creating a substantial meta impact. We should, on that same note, be mindful of the concepts that we are creating as a community, as a concept easily fulfilled is often a project that is either finished way too early, or one without direction. Aggregated, these particular notes in design philosophy can easily fix a lot of our issues with the process as it happens.

With CAP design philosophy out of the way, I'll concur heavily with Brambane on increased fluidity in balancing. With all of these things considered, here's my proposed solution:

1. First off, nerf the fuck out of Chuggalong. This isn't me being biased, this is a blatantly broken mon that will still be blatantly broken after 2.0 release. There is no way we can in good faith tiptoe around this issue, and this is the poster child of CAP power creep and overtuning.
2. Second, get rid of the buff process. Plenty of mons get worse over time. It is what it is. We've had 5 buff processes so far - Voodoom, Pyroak, Miasmaw, Chromera, Kitsunoh. Of those 5, I don't think there is a single one that was successful - the closest may have been Kitsunoh, but even Kit was an overshoot that just so happens to not be broken. Miasmaw is in a good state right now but that is honestly more because of the generational update than it is because of the buff process. Which leads me to....
3. Expand the scope of generational updates ever so slightly - maybe allow 2 competitive additions instead of one, or each gen designate one CAP update as one of particular importance. Mons maintain and even rise in viability based off of very small things - look at Alomomola. No stat changes, etc.
4. ROLLING POST-PLAY LOOKBACK. I propose extending the overall working time of a PPL until the end of CG, split up into the following stages:
   1. Stage 1: From 1.0 to end of playtest. End of 1.0: Traditional PPL with slated packages, put up to a vote, etc. This stage should have a large focus on cutting fluff and tools that complicate the vision of the CAP.
   2. Stage 2: Immediately following the next team tournament (CAPPL or CAPCL). Metagame Council (+TLT(?)) assesses the state of the CAP in the meta and whether competitive change is necessary; if the answer is yes then the floor is opened similar to a traditional PPL, but with smaller scope.
   3. Stage 3: End of generation - Nearing the end of last gen we buffed SS CAPs that were lacking in viability, with the thought process being that it was preferable to leave SS with those creations in a good place. While these processes' success is highly debatable, I am proposing that a similar process, though scaled down immensely, occurs at the end of CG with similar intentions. This stage would be far less results-based and more introspective in a formal sense - we should not only be looking to leave the metagame in a good place, but we should also be thinking about what we've learned this gen and its applications moving into a new generation. We can sit here and talk about what X taught us about Y informally, but can we really say we've learned much when 4 of the last 5 CAPs released broken, spanning both SS and SV? This could be a stage that is separated based off of CAP or conglomerated into one large stage.

That's all I have for now. I disagree a lot w/the post above mine and might try and address it, but a guy like me can't make two effortposts in one day.

EF out !

seth sealoo POKERICH CLIQUE

 

[Da Pizza Man]

Not going to bother giving some sort of introduction for this outside of this sentence, I'm just going to get straight into what I think needs to be done at this point.

1) Retire the buff process

Ever since the end of Pyroak's buff process, and the effects it had on the metagame immediately afterwards, I've been a fairly big critic of the buff process as a whole. Quite frankly, I do not think that we are ever going to come even close to achieving a utopian metagame where every single CAP is viable, or even usable, and that trying to do so is a futile effort. I also question if there's really any purpose in even trying to do this in the first place, as the recent surge in popularity of CAP OMs (Especially CAP UU, which shoutout to kenn for being the first person to actually manage to get that off the ground in years) very much feels that it occupies the same niche of creating a metagame in the current generation where every cap (or at least most of them) can be run viably.

Of course, the biggest problem with the buff process is, quite frankly, how it contributes to the topic of this thread. People still look back on Voodoom's buff process last generation and say that it was a failure, as in the end, it failed to get the mon even ranked on the viability list. Given that this was our very first buff process, this failure was absolutely massive, as it set the tone for all future processes. Quite simply put, people are now unable to exhibit restraint in these process, and this leads to massively overtuned packages being submitted such as the winning Pyroak package, and to a lesser extent, the winning Kitsunoh package (I acknowledge that, as somebody who submitted a package with Rage Fist in it for Kitsunoh, that saying this is somewhat hypocritical, but I don't think that this really detracts from my point). If we are unable to successfully buff a mon without swinging the pendulum in the other direction by potentially turning the buffed mon into one that needs to be nerfed, then I sort of wonder what the whole point of the process is to begin with. As such, I personally believe that it's much more sustainable for the metagame and project as a whole that we shut the doors on this part of the project. We have plenty of other things that we could be focusing on to retain attention in the project anyways (Tournaments, Room Events, hell we could even bring back some fun side competitions) during the downtime between projects, so I don't even really think this even has that much left going for it.

2) Rework the Movepool Stage

To start things off, I'm going to bring up one of the main criticisms of this stage for years. We are giving CAPs way too much stuff during this part of the project. Now, for a while we have sort of remedied this by removing options later down the line (I'll talk more about that in my 3rd proposal), but as of recently, it seems like we've sort of just stopped doing this? Chuggalong had pretty much nothing removed from it's movepool during the 2.0 Release, and the only thing Crescideon had removed from it was Earth Power (Which was only done because people didn't like how it could get cheese kills on Mollux, something that was supposed to be a counter). The last time we actually had substantial movepool removals during this stage of the process was Hemogoblin's process, which similarly to Cresceidon, wasn't really done for the sake of the process but more out of a metagame reaction (People really didn't like how Special Sets could just get cheese wins just because you thought they were running the more standard Physical Set). The last time we really did a movepool removal for the sake of the process was Saharaja. This is something that we need to start doing again, as movepool bloat is a large part of what contributed to the overtuning of CAPs.

However, even disregarding just bloat, I have to question if our judgement regarding competitive additions needs to be improved. To give some specific examples, I'm really not sure why some things like additions such as Stored Power and Draining Kiss on Chuggalong, Earth Power on Cresceidon, and Knock Off and Bitter Blade on Hemogoblin really managed to slip through the cracks. That being said, I do think that a fairly reasonable assumption as to why this type of stuff manages to make it onto the movepool is quite simply because, there's really not much of a budget during this part of the process, so any moves that get submitted aren't really being put under scrutiny unless they are very obviously bad additions.

There needs to be changes to this part of the project, and I think the best way to go about this is to just put any submissions during the movepool stage under more scrutiny, as well as having some sort of limit as to how many moves actually make the cut during this stage. I've seen a lot of people suggest that the best course of action would be to axe the movepool stage altogether, and just have our inital movepool consist of our defining moves, but I'm not really sure if this is actually the best approach.

3) Do away with "Release OP, Balance Later" / Be fine with releasing CAPs in weaker states

Who here remembers Cyberpunk 2077? You know, that game that everyone and their grandmother that everyone was excited for prior to release, even after the game got delayed multiple times and even into a brand new console generation. But, when it eventually did get release, all of that hype died down cause the game released in a completely unfinished, unbuggy mess. Of course, the game is fine now, thanks to a series of patches that put it into the state that it should have been in on launch, and the game seems to have a lot of fans now, but the damage has been done to it already, with plenty of people (Myself included) flat out refusing to play the game in any sort of capacity just due to the horrible state it was released in.

Now the reason I went on this tangent is because I think it's a fairly fitting analogy for how we handle the release of a lot of modern CAPs. Many of our modern CAPs are essentially "bugged" in the sense that they are very clearly overpowered at launch, which negatively affects the tournaments*, as well as people's initials perceptions CAPs and the metagame as a whole. Our common retort to this has always been that we can just nerf them later in the Post-Playtest Lookback, but by the time comes, a significant amount of time has already passed and the damage has already been done, and in a lot of cases, it can't really be repaired either. (I often still see people citing 1.0 Release Hemogoblin when giving examples of past OP CAPs that we have made, and this types of comments absolutely do drive people away from the project as a whole).

*: To give a personal example of this, managing and prepping for SV during the first couple of weeks of CAPPL this year felt absolutely dreadful, as a lot of it had to be spent on making sure our teams didn't lose to the obviously broken mon. While it did get better as the tournament progressed, I don't really attribute that to the emergency nerf or the fact that people learned how to better play around the mon overtime, but rather due to the fact that at a point in the tournament, people were overprepping for the mon so much that it just became a liability to bring, and teams stopped loading it. I have asked the user I managed with in this tournament, Concept, for his stance on this matter since I figured it would be helpful for my point, which I will edit in later. Just to clarify, I'm not trying to use this as an excuse for our poor performance that tour, as they're were numerous other factors in play that contributed to that, I'm more just bring this up as I believe this experience is relevant to the topic at hand.

I think that the only real way to about fixing this, is to just change our philosophy regarding how we choose to release mons. Quite simply put, we should be aiming our sights lower (Around B/B+), as this not only ensures that we are still going to have a viable mon, but it also gives us a lot more breathing room in case something goes wrong and we do end up overshooting (Overshooting B/B+ is getting somewhere in the A Ranks, while overshooting A/A+ gets you broken shit). Another thing needs to change is regarding doomposting and the fear of releasing mons that are dead on release. Earthflax makes a very good point that many of our most problematic CAPs have been ones that people were considered to be pretty much dead-on arrival, and we end up giving them a lot of shit that we wouldn't reasonably be doing otherwise. That being said, this is very much an "easier said than done" matter, and I have absolutely zero idea what's the actual correct way of going about this change.

 

[kenn]

Well there was (and still is quite frankly) a lengthy discussion in #prc and I figured I may as well voice my opinions here that I did there.

One of the big points I'll start with is the entirety of buff processes. I feel like these have proven themselves to be more trouble than they're worth. I have only been a part of one (Kitsunoh) and it felt like the process itself was so contentious on where we wanted Kit to land and ofc if we ended up with something like Voodoom (where it didn't really change its viability) or Pyroak (who needed a nerf after the buff process). Either of these options weren't ideal because if we overshot, then we would have to revert some of what got buffed or we undershot and ended up wasting time on a buff process. At the end of the day, I think buff processes have not necessarily done more harm than good, but they have created unnecessary changes when there are now outlets for these "lesser" used CAPs to shine (specifically atm CAP UU) or metagame/generational changes that occurred to allow these CAPs to have the spotlight i.e. Malaconda being the premier sun setter this generation when in the past it has been Jumbao.

Next on the list is the movepool bloat that CAPs tend to have upon release. As DPM said, having this part of the process be under way more scrutiny would allow us to avoid mishaps like Draining Kiss Chuggalong or Earth Power Cresceidon. Movepool bloat is most definitely an issue, but so is the competitive implications of adding moves "for the hell of it". I do believe that something needs to be done and I am not sure exactly how to address it, but I know that it was brought up in #prc about having the movesets stage focus on having 1 solid moveset that the CAP would run with 1 or 2 moves slashed in (not always necessary ofc) and basically not deviating from those moves, which would help ease not only bloat, but also potential outs against the checks and counters that a CAP should have.

And last, but certainly not least, the mindset we seem to have that we need to release a "highly viable" product. I personally believe that having a CAP come in and be top tier/broken is doing nothing for us but making us stress out the following process and wanting to counteract the end product (see Chuggalong's process and how it has a typing and ability strictly to say "no" to Hemogoblin). Tweaking our mindset to where we have a focus on the actual process, a CAP that is "viable" (as DPM said B/B+ is good as an imaginary benchmark of sorts), and a "completion" of the concept for said CAP would allow for more exploration as a community when it comes to each and every future process. It would allow us to have "room to breathe" when it comes to each CAP and "fix" any potential issues that aren't allowing it to either fulfill its purpose (i.e. the concept) or scale it back without the overwhelming presence it emanates (i.e. Hemogoblin on release/pre- loss of Bitter Blade/Fire Lash).

tl;dr Get rid of buff processes, scrutinize the moves stages of the process, and readjust our "goals" with the end product of a process.

 

[a fairy]

I'm not a particularly good contributor to CAP, and my actual contributions were back in like, Gen 5. So I hope it's not much a problem that I post my thoughts and what I think are potential solutions (if I can materalize the words for them by the time I get there) to this. I do think there is a problem, and I'm admittedly in some way part of the problem, but I don't think this is something we have to live with.

I think that there is a nature to CAP that trends towards these powerful Pokemon, because exploring an already existent gamestate (Game Freak's Pokemon) results in wanting to explore where Pokemon hasn't. In many ways, GF sets the boundaries of what is powerful, and Smogon for our metagames has to try and figure out our boundaries. I am referring specifically to CG OU in this context - we toss out Speed Boost Blaziken in Gen 5, Lunala in Gen 7, and Last Respects in Gen 9 because we set boundaries of what it means to be overpowered. These boundaries are not moored anywhere, however - introduce Kingambit to SS, a gen where Bisharp was statistically OU, and it'd be overpowered.

Power is a currency moored only to itself. When a new generation is introduced, with shiny new toys everywhere, oftentimes those toys are shinier than the ones we had before. I won't get into the complaints of why that is, only that it seems to mostly hold true from generation to generation. We have the sandbox provided to us by GF, and in order to explore what can be done in the sandbox, it is very easy to start from the underlying question of "why hasn't GF done X" - and so we explore signature moves, as an example of something more overt, or something more discrete, like finding a Pokemon with an -ate Extreme Speed.

I don't participate in the buff/nerf processes, I haven't been around enough in recent years to feel comfortable or able to, let alone knowledgeable enough to add something of value (she says, adding nothing of value to this thread). But I think that there are changes that could, in theory, be made to the creation process. Is there perhaps value in taking a bit of time, maybe a day or two, after each final vote (say, after we lock in Typing or Ability or Stats), to do a "core concept catch-up" to review where our options have taken us and what our decision means? A bit of a handing off of the baton between one stage and the other, where the previous leader and the community can pause for a moment, reflect on the decision we came to, and then have a brief conversation about what it meant before handing it over formally to the next stage?

It would seem to me that additional conversation can be beneficial, and when the opening questions for a new stage are understandably forward facing, it can be easy to move ahead without discussing with others what consequences and newly opened doors our decisions made, without having to then worry about "oh but now we're talking about threats" or "sure we picked <notable thing> but now for a new conversation where that's only one factor weighing into it".

Like, obviously we had conversations about Diamond Storm for Saharaja or Pixilate for Hemogoblin, and then voted to select those options, but soon after the vote we immediately moved onto whatever was next. Perhaps there is value in taking a moment to evaluate that decision - not change it - and what it means to our concept, and what it could potentially mean going forward? We'd have a moment to talk out or mention things that have changed as we narrow our remaining choices. This would allow us to review what our selection means for our concept, and how it further shapes our future options. Rather than being locked to a specific section immediately following a vote, where the need to develop further facets of our 'mon or poll jumping rules limits our abilities to understand the choice we just made, we can have a moment, not even particularly long, to process some thoughts in a shared public space what our recent votes entail going forward.

 

[Brambane]

I have been thinking about this and I think what we could do is something of a larger Power Creep Rebalancing.

There are two parts to this process.

Part 1: Community Poll of Rebalanced CAPs
Basically, this would be a poll where users can list any CAPs from nominated list of the council for rebalancing. What you would calculate is the percentage based on times a CAP is listed over the number of posts. So if Cresceidon appears on 33 out of 35 posts, it has 94.3% presence and would qualify for a change. This is way for the community to have a direct voice in what CAPs should be changed. As for the threshold for change, I do think simple majority is the clear winner. Any balanced CAP shouldn't ever get more than 50% presence.

Part 2: Rebalancing
Rather than the traditional nerf threads, once a CAP is selected, it goes to the metagame council. The metagame council comes up with changes to the CAP(s) for rebalancing, and then posts them for public feedback. Council ultimately makes the final call; a responsible council should be able to justify their changes while also responding to community feedback before making a final call. This council would obviously need to be very active in this process, so any user who isn't going to have reasonable availability should voluntarily or be forced to abstain.

This to me is a good balance between community voice and council oversight for a better vision of the metagame.

 

[quziel]

I guess I sorta helped spawn this thread, so I should reply to it.

1) We should probably change how we do movesets to reduce bloat. We should vote on one, maybe two "moveset archetypes" and slowly fill them in after they're selected. To give a view how this could look we could do the following.

• Clangorous Soul Sweeper vs. Clangorous Soul Breaker
• Add Clangorous Soul
• Add Clanging Scales
• Add Flamethrower
• Add Surf
• Add Sludge Bomb
• Done

We should probably err on the side of "all that's necessary" before release, and recognize that if the mon's clearly underperforming a few weeks after release we can just add more stuff, and do a mini-PPL. Lets be honest, both Cresceidon and Chuggalong would both still be A+ if they were released with minimalist movepools, that is just 4 moves each. Our 1.0 release should prioritize being a lean set that we can add to later.

2) We should consider a more dynamic PPL schedule.

This is tied to the above, but if we're releasing a mon with a more lean initial moveset that just includes the bare necessities, then it raises the chance that we're releasing a mon that's going to slightly underperform. This goes back to where we're aiming to release the mon. While I recognize that VR rankings are just a construct, they're a useful shorthand. Releasing a mon with the entire kitchen sink raises its powerlevel somewhat, and might have us aim for A+, whereas releasing a mon with a more minimalist movepool might be aiming for A-. These are both fine for us, but if we're raising the chance that the mon is a bit weak, we should also be more open with moving the PPL up a few weeks, adding a bit more, and then seeing how it goes from there. If we do this we should be open to doing a second PPL afterwards. CAP processes are creating mons with a lot of moving parts, so having the balancing be an active process (at least for a bit) is fine.

3) Buffs were sorta nearing their end anyways.

When buffs were initially proposed they were a way to take mons that had truly been forgotten by time and take them from being unusable to suboptimal. Think of the difference between running a team with a mon like Zarude in CAP because you like Zarude, and running a team with Wigglytuff in CAP because you like Wigglytuff. They're both fairly unviable, but there's a degree of difference between them. In the same way look at pre-buff Voodoom in SS vs. post-buff Voodoom in SS. They're both unviable, but one of them is actively trolling the other is a weird choice. (Dex will disagree with me on this point). We're frankly running out of truly unviable CAPs. Kerfluffle is an objectively worse Iron Valiant, but like, its not actively throwing to use it, having Parting Shot and Psychic Noise gives it a few very niche uses, and you can win games with it, even if you'd be better off with Valiant. Aurumoth is unviable, but like, it still has Weakness Policy + Weak Armor sets, Final Gambit sets, and so on. We don't have that many mons that are actively trolling atm, so I'm fine with buffs ending.

 

[spoo]

Okay, there's a lot that's been suggested in this thread, but here is where I see some consensus:


1) There should be a shifting of norms around how strong we aim to release the average new CAP.


This isn't really enforceable given that it's sorta just a mindset thing, but I agree we should put the days of "release OP and nerf down" behind us. If all we care about is a highly-viable-but-balanced end product, then releasing OP and gradually tuning down is arguably the best way to do things; if a mon is strong, it'll be used a ton, which gives us the most amount of data on what's working too well and/or what's not working well enough. Long term, though, I think this release model contributes heavily to issues raised in the OP, as well as drawn-out metagame instability that no one particularly enjoys dealing with. Shox has pretty clearly bucked this trend, and although I've already seen a bunch of folks saying it looks like ass and is the weakest CAP ever, I think it landed in a great spot and we should learn to be okay with CAPs not making a huge splash on release –– not everything has to be a meta destroyer. If I had to articulate it, I think our modern approach has been along the lines of "shoot for A+ and err high." Even just reorienting to "shoot for A and err low" would do a lot of good. A new CAP landing in the B ranks shouldn't sound alarms or immediately be written off as a failure.


2) There is major dissatisfaction around the buff process.


Kitsunoh probably put the nail in the coffin here. Every chance I get, I try to emphasize that buffed CAPs shouldn't be hitting the A ranks, and the original PRC proposal for buff processes is very, very explicit in this too, but there is an equally vocal faction that believes buffs are pointless unless the buffed mons are high up on the VR. Even many of the people who agree that buffs should be extremely moderate still seem unhappy with buffs like Voodoom and Miasmaw, deeming the end result too weak and unimpactful. No matter the outcome of a given buff, people's varying expectations of what a buff should be and what a buff is leads to dissatisfaction across the board. If buff processes are simply going to take an unusable mon and make it usable (not necessarily viable), as is outlined in the original PRC thread, then it seems like people don't think that's a worthwhile venture. If buffs take an unusable mon and make it highly viable, people get rightfully upset when we overshoot and screw with the meta. And the in-between space, where we take an unusable mon and make it viable-but-not-too-viable, is too difficult of a needle to thread every time.

I don't think this is the direct failure of any Buff Leaders, or a fatal flaw in the process itself, I think it's just really hard to get right. When a CAP is so awful that it never gets brought in tournaments (our only reliable avenue for evaluating a mon's performance), we have essentially 0 data on what its niche is, which of its tools are most valuable, which tools it's desperately lacking, and so on, making buff processes largely an exercise in trying to fly a plane blindfolded. This is a shame, because I believe buff processes have the potential to do a lot of good. The position of BL is an amazing stepping stone into further leadership positions like SL/TL and has very successfully onboarded some great users into the inner folds of our project. The benefits outlined in the original PRC thread still hold true as well, go read through it if you want. However, most of the buffs themselves just aren't hitting the mark. It's also true that the amount of truly straight-up unusable CAPs is at an all-time low in SV. Gen 9 is a great environment for experimentation and using highly niche, creative picks with success. I don't want to close the door on buff processes forever, but for now, it's time we take a break.


A last point: despite the general discontent and negative sentiment towards buffs as a whole, I'll argue that what we did with Miasmaw and Chromera at the end of SS was a great choice and were our two most successful buff processes. I think CAPs deserve to be usable in their home generation as a matter of principle. We did not push Miasmaw and Chromera into any great viability in SS, but they are certainly usable, and it helped set them up for success in Gen 9 (especially Miasmaw). Going forward, maybe we just say that buffs can only occur at the end of a generation upon CAPs that were made that generation.

3) Structural changes to the process (Movesets, PPL, additional brief "reflection" stages, etc.) may be in order

I'm gonna direct discussion over to this thread because it already exists and it's a bit more on-topic. If you made a point here about restructuring the movesets stage, sorry if you have to repeat anything, feel free to just quote yourself or something idk.

===

Other stuff / closing thoughts: as far as actual nerf processes go, I think community surveys will be a big help in balancing CAPs down the line, and maybe the meta council can be slightly more aggressive when it comes to nerfs (lower the bar for needing a nerf, try harder to not let unbalanced CAPs exist when we start a new CAP's process, etc), so I'll bring up some ideas to the council and see what they think. Re: still allowing for end-of-gen buffs on current-gen CAPs that were released too weak, I'll bring this up with mods and gauge thoughts. Will update this thread if anything new happens, but for now I'm closing it, thanks for the discussion y'all.