Policy Review Checks and Counters Discussion

bugmaniacbob

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So I see that this thread is winding down somewhat. I wasn't going to post here originally, since the descriptions of the Threats/Counters stages being given in this thread were so utterly removed from what I had known and contributed to from late DP to late BW. I say this because the Threats discussion is one of my favourite stages, so I was curious to know what was perceived as wrong with it. I had understood the Threats discussion to be, as jas said, an extension of the Concept Assessment stage in which a path is specified and discussion of the concept within a metagame context is made possible, or rather, the specifics can be debated upon. So, I don't think I have anything to say in that sense that has not already been said.

Before this thread closes, however, I just want to bring this up:

Deck Knight said:
Proposal: In the threats discussion stage, which occurs after the typing polls conclude, the community and TL decide upon a list of Pokemon which should reliably, occasionally, and situationally check and counter the CAP. The extent to which each threat should handle the CAP should be discussed thoroughly in the thread, and a final post should be made by the TL to ensure that everyone's on the same page come the discussion's conclusion.

A general idea of what the CAP should threaten should also be an end product of the Threats discussion in addition to identifying those threats that can reliably, occasionally, and situationally check and counter the CAP.

The counters discussion stage becomes non-mandatory. It can be invoked by either the TL or the forum moderators based on their interpretation of how the CAP has proceeded since the threats discussion stage. If the CAP has gone awry, they may have the discussion to get it back on track and/or discuss additional/changed checks and counters as needed by the particular CAP.
This is the proposal for the Threats/Counters discussions as defined by the previous thread on the subject, which is still awaiting implementation on-site, or rather, the update thread that I made to incorporate this information is currently idle. Further, rather than restate the points that I made in the last thread in a long and sprawling fashion, I'll just post the more pertinent ones here:

bugmaniacbob said:
That the new Threats discussion is designed to accomplish two tasks - firstly, to decide upon threats that we desire to give our chosen CAP the most trouble, as pertaining to the concept and the concept alone, and not typing or whatever else have you, and secondly, to identify threats that may give a generic Pokemon of our chosen typing trouble, and which of them we are comfortable with having check or counter our CAP, with the sole purpose of seeing what we can afford to give our CAP in the later stages (ie. no concrete decision, just discussion)
bugmaniacbob said:
Under Article 2, the threats discussion would happen after typing, so I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say here. The point of Article 2 is that the only counters/checks that would be set in stone in the initial Threats discussion would be those that only pertained to the concept, and that any threats that were decided upon vis-a-vis typing would give the project some focus, but would be subject to change depending on how the rest of the project went, since nothing concrete would be decided.
bugmaniacbob said:
One other thing I want to bring up, related to the above, is making clear the idea of things that we want our chosen CAP to be able to beat, as well as Pokemon we want to be able to counter it, in our Threats discussion. To bring up the Voodoom example again, we ought to have decided in our Threats discussion that Zapdos should not counter our CAP, so as to avoid having a common answer to the two, if that was what we wanted; typically these two go hand in hand (so that, if we don't put something on a threat list then we are expecting our CAP to perform fairly against it), but making it a more explicit topic of discussion in our process description would not, I feel, go amiss.
To begin with, right now I have no idea whether or not the quote from Deck Knight, which is for all intents and purposes still a binding PRC resolution vis-a-vis the Threats/Counters stages, is the wording that people actually associate with what the stages are attempting to accomplish, based on the responses to this thread that I have read. In the resolution, emphasis is given to the extent to which different threats should be able to check or counter the CAP, and indeed to which the CAP should be able to threaten other Pokemon. I am not certain whether or not this is considered desirable, or else constricting, at present. So, I suppose my question specifically regarding that part of the proposal is, what parts of it are we sticking with, and what exactly are we planning to put on-site on the page describing the Threats Discussion? So far I have not really seen anything in this thread that matches the resolutions of previous threads on the subject.

The other three paragraphs are part of my own thoughts on the subject from last time, which I feel are still rather relevant as regards how we approach the stage. The first is that there be a specific distinction made between those threats that are assigned according to the dictates of the concept, and those that are incidental by virtue of the typing. For Cawmodore's part, the typing seems relatively diminished in terms of its importance to the threat list, since any given counter can be removed with the appropriate coverage move; to this end, from what I can tell the discussion was assessment-orientated, where the question of whether Cawmodore would be more susceptible to walls or revenge killers comes into play. The latter seems obvious, yet it would appear that the stats and ability conspired somewhat to mitigate this. I'll stop idly speculating, but the point remains that the distinction between concept-based and typing-based threats is one that should be emphasised in any future write-up of the stage. I would take this further, and say that the divide should be emphasised further still, and that those concept-based threats should be set in stone at the end of the discussion, whereas the purely typing-based ones should be plastic - the reasoning being that, as I believe a number of people said, the concept should lead the project and not the typing, hence its needs are elevated above the incidental. Occasionally the reverse is unavoidable - I made the point in Tomohawk's threats discussion that we absolutely had to beat Reuniclus, but the stat biases and typing rendered this more or less impossible - but the principle should stand, even if it is occasionally unworkable within the confines of what the game gives us.

As to the final point, it has not been touched on in this thread much, which is why I wanted to include it, but I suspect that it has not been brought up purely because it is not a subject of contention, rather than its not being a relevant factor in the Threats discussion any longer.

--------------------

For those of you not willing to read:
  • Decide upon a verbal form of the consensus reached within the thread
  • Emphasise the divide between different degrees of threat
  • There should be a separation of threats based on concept and threats based on typing
  • Only those threats that are based on the concept should be set in stone
 
There are two things that have been nagging me about the threat discussions and that I feel aren't taken very seriously in discussions like this.

Firstly, the typing has a huge, almost decisive impact on a Pokemon's "threat profile". The vast majority of real OU Pokemon are straight attackers with some viable support moves, and the vast majority of CAP Pokemon are designed to be straight attackers with some viable support moves. The other aspects of a Pokemon generally serve to decrease the number of possible threats. A Ground-type can get a coverage move to remove Grass-types as checks/counters, but it can't somehow have something that causes grounded Fire-types to counter it. The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether the threat discussion can even be separate from the typing discussion at all. We apparently intend for the threat discussion to function mainly as a power control, but the only thing that the threat discussion can do, regardless of when it happens, is to shrink the "threat profile" dictated by the typing. It seems to me like the threat discussion might only be good for giving excuses to give a CAP weird and exotic abilities and moves that we otherwise wouldn't consider at all.

Speaking of abilities, the second big thing is the notion of situational checks. It comes up without fail in every CAP ability discussion and often in movepool discussions as well, yet it seems like nobody thinks to account for it when talking about the process. From what I can tell, the intention behind every proposal that "breaks" the "threat profile" is precisely the notion of situational checks. Ability 1 allows CAP to break one set of checks but lose to another, and Ability 2 does the opposite. It's just that such a proposal often doesn't get the focused discussion it might need because each proposal is competing with others and can only hog the thread for so long before it's considered a problem. I think that we'd have more sensible proposals along these lines if supporters - and eventually all of us when such a proposal wins - were more intentional about making sure we know precisely how a proposal is meant to alter the "threat profile".

In essence, I think that perhaps we should foster a culture of having discussions of threats in every competitive stage of the process, instead of always having arguments about whether there are reasonable threats in the first place. Maybe every proposal should have a clear indication of what it's supposed to do with the "threat profile" to be considered to have intelligent support. I feel like the threat discussion stage as it stands now is pretty much asking to be broken, but I don't particularly care about its fate either way. (I'm not sure I worded this last part very clearly...)
 

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