Done On Secondary Ability

[earthflax]

spoo approved
Hi all,

We should make it so that the final Secondary Ability poll ends before the Art poll begins. This can be achieved either through delaying the start of Art Submissions by an as-yet undetermined amount of time relative to the competitive stages, or through setting a hard timeline that the Art poll cannot begin until the Secondary Ability polls close, or both

The main reason that I'd like to see this change is that the competitive aspects of this process should inform the flavor aspects as much as possible, and additionally because the current timeline can make it so that this dynamic is inverted at times. We did not have to approach this issue at all in CAP36 because Ramnarok's framework prohibited a Secondary Ability in the first place, but this inversion of dynamics can best be demonstrated by Shox's process. The first Secondary Ability poll went up right after the last Art poll ended. I'm not one to speculate on the reasons behind the thought processes of voters, nor do I really care how the poll ended on a personal or process level (I actually think that we voted for the best Ability regardless), but I think that you could make the argument that this poll was, to some extent (even if it was very subtle), informed by the flavor of the bullfrog-like design that won the Art poll, with the abilities that made the most sense flavor-wise (Wandering Spirit and Sticky Hold) making the second poll fairly easily. Even if this win was purely coincidental (which I'm inclined to agree with, in this specific case), I think that it can be pretty reasonably concluded that, should the Art poll and Secondary Ability poll overlap, and especially in cases where the former ends before the latter, it can lead to flavor-based voting.

I think that, pretty fundamentally, this is a simple fix to a potentially very bad issue. I think that our philosophy on this front should always be one that assumes the best of all voters while preparing for the worst (or, in other words, even if we don't think that people are voting for the wrong reasons, we should still limit the variables that might influence them to do so). Additionally, with this change, the only other stage that could be informed by the results of the Art Poll would be Movesets, which I don't think is a huge issue considering we have Defining Moves to lock in moves that could otherwise fall victim to flavor-based voting as well. There could be problems with this proposal on the flavor side of things, which I am less familiar with, or from a purely logistical level as far as the timeline for the process and implementation goes, which I'm also not familiar with. The main issue that I can see with this proposal is the issue that got Secondary Ability moved a few years back with the possibility of a determined Secondary Ability forcing artists to change their submissions on very short notice to suit the Ability flavor-wise. I can sympathize with this concern, but considering the philosophy behind CAP, I find it to be much more important for the flavor of a CAP to never influence competitive submissions and votes than vice versa. On top of this, some artists now feel an impetus to suit their design for all of the abilities that are being discussed/slated for Secondary Ability, which is essentially the same issue that we tried solving by moving Secondary Ability in the first place but made even broader. If there are other issues, then do let me know, but I think that, from my perspective, this is a fairly simple fix for an obvious problem.

 

[Zetalz]

I've felt a fair amount of frustration over Secondary Ability for quite some time. It feels like there's no happy-medium placement for it in the process without causing friction with some other aspect of it. Placing it directly after Primary isn't ideal since it's completely uninformed by the stats stage, and essentially just drags the Ability stage out longer than it need be. Placing it after stats and pre-Art, as it was for a long time, is what ended up in the proposal regarding Artist stress that resulted in it's current placement. And while I do agree with flax that competitive aspects should inform flavor aspects as much as possible, I also still understand and empathize with that prior proposal. You could readily see and feel the burnout caused in the artist channels over the stress being caused by Secondary's placement.

I think the op's proposal to essentially revert the previous proposal and move it back where it was Pre-Art will not result in a satisfying solution for anybody. At that point we're just starting up the cycle of kicking a dirty, old, half-deflated ball that nobody likes playing with between flavor and competitive sides of the project once one side gets fed up with it.

But if we're not going to revert the previous change, and continue to exist with this current un-satisfying iteration, then we still need hash out some how to solve the annoying conundrum that is this stage. The rest of this post isn't really structured as a formal proposal or counter-proposal, more a collection of thoughts on the other frustrating aspects about Secondary's problematic existence I've pondered over the years. As a preface; I'm on day 6 of this current migraine, so deepest apologies if this gets kinda rambly or tangent-y.


-The Often Superfluous Nature of Secondary Ability-
In CAP, there is very much a visible culture of preferring to have 'something over nothing', regardless of any confident consensus on the viability of a project. This is noticeable in Movepools, usually manifesting in the form of move bloat, which is a problem we've been slowly addressing over the years to varying success. However, when it comes to Secondary, this mentality is very difficult to escape. I'm not afraid to say I too have fallen victim to it in my time here. The root causes of this mentality aren't hard to deduce. The ever-present fear of a CAP releasing in an underperforming state has haunted many a project we've done in recent memory, and with it comes the overriding desire to give a CAP as many viable tools as possible, to ensure it's success.

However, even when a project DOES have high confidence in a CAP's success, what often ends up happening is this need to ensure viability, transforms into a want for variety. Whether to cover an angle not fully covered in prior stages, or to address a few niche interactions, or just because it's pro-concept; many winning Secondaries have been relegated to being a part of the mon's kit purely for varieties sake.

The stated intention of Secondary to not cause conflict nor outshine Primary Ability means that you will rarely see a truly viable secondary being voted in for a CAP that's already had smooth sailing up until to that point. spoo's absolutely excellent post in Secondary for Obliteryx illustrated this more succinctly than I ever could here. Threading the needle with Secondary is exceptionally difficult. Yet there's a lot less thought and legwork put into the stage in the majority of modern projects that would be necessary to see that through.


An example of the Secondary conundrum that's personally bothered me a lot over the years, is the terrible performance of No Competitive Ability in polling. While it's not often dead-last in most polls, NCA also struggles to win out, REGARDLESS of how smooth a given project has been going. As far as I can recall, there have only been 2 CAPS in the past 10 years, whom were not already restricted in their ability count by their concept/framework (Starters/Book/Ram/Chrom), that won NCA as their Secondary; Pajantom and Astrolotl.

One could point to the high power level of their Primaries, or their general strong builds as the reason why NCA managed to beat out the 'something over nothing' mentality here, but the actual numbers are closer than you'd think. Astro in particular I think illustrates how strong the desire to have something over nothing can be. Regenerator is an exceptionally strong ability, that at the time of Astro's creation, was arguably the single most controversial ability you could bring up in a CAP discussion. And despite this, Poison Touch still nearly managed to worm it's way to victory. On a mon that with hindsight, very clearly would not have used it to any meaningful degree. But even if it was terrible, as long as it wasn't causing any problems, why not try and slap it on? Something over nothing.


On the flipside of this coin, in an a bit of ironic duality, there have also only been 2 CAPs in modern memory who's Secondary processes are brought up as examples of Secondary actually achieving it's stated, intended purpose; Cresceidon and Shox. While I agree completely with the sentiment on Cres' implementation (again, illustrated fantastically in spoo's linked post) , I do very much feel like it is the exception to the rule, as I don't have much in the way of positive to say for the other example in Shox.

Shox's Secondary stage was very clearly an instance of the "Oh shit, we fucked up!" button getting windmill slammed in an attempt to course correct after users realized they tunnel visioned way too hard during Primary. It was not about attempting to strike a balance between viable abilities, but racing to get any viable ability on the mon before it dropped. While one can point to it as an example of Secondary achieving a positive outcome, "saving the mon" in a way, one can also point to it as a superfluous element of the process, given that we have already implemented a stage that is explicitly for the purpose of tuning a CAP after release; Post-Play Lookback. While we've mostly utilized Post-Play as a method to 'release broken, nerf down', it is just as capable of 'saving' a weaker performing CAP, hoisting it up to where it ought to be using hard data gathered from actual playtesting, while also allowing changes to stats and moves. There is nothing more superfluous than having the same positive influence of a stage be achievable almost as easily later down the line, where it is more directly capable and intentional.


All of this old man rambling to say; I really struggle to see the value Secondary Ability brings to the process when compared to the amount of headaches it causes. Honestly, it feels like a part of the process that's here just because it's always been here (more or less), and since it rarely contributes anything of true positive or negative value, it's just been allowed to remain as is. Now becoming the red-headed stepchild of the process, causing fuss with both the competitive and flavor sides of the family. But it doesn't have to be!

So I guess I kinda lied earlier when I said I wasn't going to offer a formal counter-proposal lol, but in the midst of writing this way-too-long post the idea just kinda came to me.


I think there is merit to removing Secondary Ability as a mandatory stage of the process, unless explicitly demanded by the concept/framework, turning it instead into an optional stage that is only discussed upon after finishing Stats, with users needing to provide strong support for it's inclusion. And if in the case of said inclusion, for it to be placed before Art Polls and extending the time between Secondary's wrap-up and the beginning of Art Polling by an amount of time suitable for artists to not pull their hair out.

This, I think anyway, addresses the issue of the superfluousness of Secondary, forcing users to think more closely on the stage, as well as the entirety of the process up to that point, producing a higher quality discussion and outcome than the usual slap-dashery it is now. It also allows artists to be given hard confirmation to not have to worry about it and finalize their designs, or be given a generous heads-up extension to deal with it. The specific amount of time can be discussed by people who are more involved in the flavor process, I think. I don't really feel qualified to throw out numbers here.


I'm certain I didn't mention a few things I wanted too, or provided more examples for context, but I really wanted to get this post out in a timely fashion. The struggles with Secondary are something that's bothered me for a long time here, and I'm very keen on seeing them addressed in some form.

 

[Spammernoob]

Figured I'd make a post here (speaking personally, not as a mod).

I'll reference the original Relocating Secondary Ability thread (https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/relocating-secondary-ability.3705301/) as I think much of the reasoning there is relevant here.
The original proposal as outlined in the thread was:

Hide

Proposed new pipeline in the situation that primary ability is central:

v
1) Primary ability stage
2) Stats stage
3) Primary ability centrality eval
4) Art poll
5) Secondary ability stage
v


For the last point in this section I wanted to highlight some areas in which Secondary Ability before Art could be seen as necessary:
1) The concept has a high amount of depth, and the Primary Ability touches on a very specific niche inside it- with much more room for exploration. Example: Jumbao
2) The primary ability is mild, and doesn't define the mon. There is clearly a power budget for more abilities here. Example: Cyclohm
Its also worth noting that both of these concepts had 2 abilities in mind before even reaching the secondary stage- Cyclohm's was outlined in the concept, and Jumbao we decided to do a sun and a sand ability prior.

Click to collapse...

In summary, if we expect a CAP's secondary to see no competitive play, then we relocate Secondary Ability stage to after Art Poll. Notably, this proposal allows for Secondary Poll to take place before Art Poll if we expect the secondary ability to see competitive use. The criteria for when this is the case are outlined in the proposal above.

The problem that this proposal aimed to solve was to avoid (when possible) designs essentially getting invalidated by the choice of Secondary Ability. It conceded that competitive should take precedent over flavor, but in the case where the secondary would see no use anyways, there is no point in making artists' lives harder.

The proposal that ultimately got implemented was to move Art Poll before Secondary Ability Poll in all cases, bypassing the need for Primary Ability Centrality Evaluation. Given that CAP rarely has competitively used Secondary abilities, and such a stage would likely see very little engagement (see: activity during Threats stage), this was definitely not an unreasonable solution, and saw no objections at the time.

What has changed since this proposal? This proposal passed after Saharaja's process, at the end of Gen 8. Since then, we've had 6 CAPs, 3 of which (Cresceidon, Shox, Obliteryx) with competitively used secondary abilities. Realistically, I don't think any of these processes has been negatively impacted by Secondary Ability Poll taking place after Art Poll. However it is not unreasonable to worry that this might become an issue in the future.

That being said, I am against a full revert of the proposal. The impetus for the original change was a concrete issue artists had, and, while similar concerns regarding flavor impacting competitive stages were raised at the time (here), they haven't been borne out in any recent process. I think the tradeoff of solving a hypothetical problem by reintroducing a known one just doesn't make any sense. The OP brings up that artists may need to adjust their design for the range of discussed secondaries, but this seems like a lesser evil compared to designs being invalidated right before polls, by an otherwise inconsequential Secondary Ability choice. I'm not an artist, so I'd need artist input on whether moving Secondary Ability after Art has actually made life easier (Pipotchi).

Additionally, it's not clear to me that this proposal solves the problem as outlined. Even if Secondary Ability Poll occurred first, I think it's impossible to avoid some level of influence from Art; if my favorite design is incompatible with a Secondary Ability, wouldn't I be incentivized to vote against said Secondary Ability? Ultimately, it is a matter of degrees, and I don't think we have enough evidence that the design actually affects Secondary Ability Poll to a degree that warrants this change.

As an aside, I will bring up the logistical side, as that is probably the part I am most familiar with. We currently have multiple flavor stages (Name, # of Prevos, Sprite, and Shiny) that take place after Art Poll, and only one competitive stage (Secondary Ability). Moving Secondary Ability before Art basically extends the process by the duration of the Secondary Ability Poll, but more importantly, increases the time where the competitive side is basically just waiting for the flavor side to finish. This point is relatively trivial, so I left it at the end of the post, but it nudges me towards keeping things as-is.

In conclusion, I think things are basically fine the way they are now. However, I am also fine with the original proposal, where we decide whether Art comes before Secondary Ability based on whether we expect the secondary ability to be used.

EDIT: New post while I was writing this. I don't hate the idea of making Secondary Ability optional. That is, during Primary Ability Centrality Evaluation, we decide whether we have a Secondary Ability Stage (in which case, it occurs before Art Poll), or we decide to skip Secondary Ability Stage and just get 2 flavor abilities afterwards.

 

[shnowshner]

Extremely 3:00-AM-stream-of-consciousness type post below. There's a TL:DR at the bottom.

The first Secondary Ability poll went up right after the last Art poll ended. I'm not one to speculate on the reasons behind the thought processes of voters, nor do I really care how the poll ended on a personal or process level (I actually think that we voted for the best Ability regardless), but I think that you could make the argument that this poll was, to some extent (even if it was very subtle), informed by the flavor of the bullfrog-like design that won the Art poll, with the abilities that made the most sense flavor-wise (Wandering Spirit and Sticky Hold) making the second poll fairly easily. Even if this win was purely coincidental (which I'm inclined to agree with, in this specific case), I think that it can be pretty reasonably concluded that, should the Art poll and Secondary Ability poll overlap, and especially in cases where the former ends before the latter, it can lead to flavor-based voting.

Click to collapse...

This whole tangent does not sit right with me. You spend half the wordcount backpedaling about how this situation is very likely completely fine and pointing at nothing, and use it as a baseline for the proposal on the basis it "can lead to flavor-based voting" regardless? It just isn't. Wandering Spirit has nothing to do with Shox, at all. Immunity, the second highest placement, does not either outside of the Normal-type being shared with Snorlax and Zangoose. Sticky Hold sort-of makes the most sense with frogs typically seen as "slimy," or illustrating the triboelectric effect of static electricity, but its still a stretch if you want to compare it to all other Sticky Hold users.

Look, the ordering of the top voting list (Sticky Hold - Immunity - Wandering Spirit - Seed Sower - Heatproof) definitely lets you draw conclusions about flavor-based voting. Sticky Hold and Immunity are more broad and rank above the other three, but at the same time, Wandering Spirit and Seed Sower make far less sense for Shox's design than Heatproof does, and excluding NCA, that one placed dead last!

Here's the thing about flavor-based voting: it's inescapable. We can't control how people vote, and anyone who can post can vote. People are voting for reasons beyond our goal of competitive-first focus the moment we have open the Concept Poll of a CAP.

Additionally, it's not clear to me that this proposal solves the problem as outlined. Even if Secondary Ability Poll occurred first, I think it's impossible to avoid some level of influence from Art; if my favorite design is incompatible with a Secondary Ability, wouldn't I be incentivized to vote against said Secondary Ability? Ultimately, it is a matter of degrees, and I don't think we have enough evidence that the design actually affects Secondary Ability Poll to a degree that warrants this change.

Click to collapse...

This is a very good take and highlights the difficulty of trying to control the potential impact flavor-minded decisions can have. There are many factors that could influence how someone decided to vote, and we have no surefire way of knowing what they are for any given individual. It could be competitive, it could be flavor, it could be outright trolling, maybe someone wasn't even sober and threw some letters together. Just as someone might vote for Sticky Hold because it makes sense for Shox, they may also vote against it because it doesn't align aesthetically with the Pokemon that currently have Sticky Hold. This is still voting for flavor, but in a way reverse to how its been presented. That's what we're up against.

Let's talk typing for a sec:

• We're 39 CAPs deep at this point and not one has retread on a typing used by a previous CAP.
  • To elaborate, I looked through the first Typing Poll of every CAP between SM and now, and the amount of times a Typing on said poll was used by a prior CAP was 4: Steel/Flying for Obliteryx (last place), Fire/Grass for Jumbao (last place), Steel/Flying again for Equilibra (second to last), and Flying/Steel yet again for Chromera (second to last).
• Of these 39 CAPs, 17 of them have a typing that was unused by any official Pokemon at time of release. (Syclant, Revenankh, Pyroak, Kitsunoh, Cyclohm, Colossoil, Voodoom, Tomohawk, Necturna, Mollux, Aurumoth, Volkraken [2014, Volcanion was released 2015], Plasmanta, Crucibelle, Kerfluffle, Miasmaw, Hemogoblin)

What does this tell me? People vote for unused type combos frequently, and avoid previous CAP typings as much as possible. How confident can we be that the voterbase is picking the most competitively-relevant typing when the data is skewed so heavily for "unique" typings?

Even this argument I don't hold too much value for. From a competitive standpoint, a unique typing offers a unique niche in a format, and given CAPs tend to be somewhat relevant in their own metagame, overlapping your typing with one could put us at risk with competing for space. Furthermore, this does not account for all the instances where proposed unique typings failed to succeed, or the fact that in many cases these typings had strong merit for the CAP in question, hence why they were allowed to be on the poll at all!

That's the thing about CAP: we don't want people to vote for flavor, and thus we've implemented measures to minimize it as much as possible. It's a major part of what the TLT is there for. Sticky Hold doing better than Seed Sower in the Secondary Poll because of the winning design for Shox is a significantly less impactful reason compared to Sticky Hold being a generally good, straightforward, and practical ability for the sort of competitive role Shox was seeking to fulfill, compared to something more awkward, variable and potentially harmful like Seed Sower is. I think it's unfair to assume, even half-heartedly, that Sticky Hold did well because people felt it worked with the design more than how it worked with our toolkit.

Sorry if this comes off as overly bitter, but it's hard to read that paragraph and not feel like you're trying to draw conclusions off of information you outright recognize at inadequate. Please do not do this. I would know from experience.

I think that our philosophy on this front should always be one that assumes the best of all voters while preparing for the worst (or, in other words, even if we don't think that people are voting for the wrong reasons, we should still limit the variables that might influence them to do so). Additionally, with this change, the only other stage that could be informed by the results of the Art Poll would be Movesets, which I don't think is a huge issue considering we have Defining Moves to lock in moves that could otherwise fall victim to flavor-based voting as well.

Click to collapse...

The whole of your argument could have really just been this block right here with zero mention of how things went down with the Shox Poll. Even if the likelyhood of a finalized design influencing voters is mostly inconsequential, ideally we limit how much reach flavor has on competitive stages as much as possible so that the CAP process is as good as it can possibly be. Pushing Art Polls to start after Secondary Ability, when applicable, is a step towards further optimizing the CAP Process ideal. Spammer brought up a good point with regards to timing, the flavor stages can already drag a process out quite heavily, and this furthers that annoyance. I don't find needing to wait longer is too concerning, even if it does suck.

Personally, I've always held onto the belief that CAP would be better off if every flavor-related stage only got going the moment we finished up Movesets: get the whole functionality skeleton out the gate and let the artwork side of things come afterwards. I have been told that this isn't a good way of doing things due to both the length of such a process, and Showdown-related implementation hurdles: were this not a concern, I'm certain we'd have gone down this route a long time ago. So any step that gets us closer to this ideal is something I am broadly in support of.


This is where we arrive at Zeta's proposal of just axing Secondary if there's not enough qualified intent to pursue one. What exactly are we using this stage for? Primary Ability already gives us direction and strength to build around, so we're not in need of that (at least, we shouldn't be). Is it to further our mission to explore the design of competitive Pokemon and a chosen concept? Our results in this case are rather mixed imo, some CAPs can certainly choose between two Abilities, but most stick to just one. And if its an emergency button to reroute a CAP people are losing faith in, we already have PPL to handle such things, or upcoming stages to use as well. I understand the sentiment completely.

Now, as far as the OP is concerned, this isn't solving anything. Secondary being optional only affects the potential for overlap with Art Polls to encourage flavor-based voting when there's no poll to be had. So we've kinda solved the problem, except when we do want to explore a Secondary. Now what? When do we hold this stage? If it still occurs after Art Poll, we're losing optimization again. And if we don't have the stage at all in favor of addressing it during PPL, well that's after Art too.

_______________________________________

Here's my final thoughts on the matter, based on what I said above and in response to what others have mentioned:

I don't think this is going to bring meaningful change to how polls proceed. There's too many variables attached to what makes a person vote a certain way. CAP already has a lot in place as-is to encourage users to think about the competitive side when voting for such stages.
I would agree that this is the correct path from an optics view. You said it best, "even if we don't think that people are voting for the wrong reasons, we should still limit the variables that might influence them to do so." This should be the modus operandi of CAP.
We would be reverting a change that was made to avoid other problems people had. I am of the opinion that flavor-related aspects of CAP should always come second to competitive ones, and your artwork doing worse because of an ability choice is completely irrelevant to how the CAP will perform. It just sucks for you and you'll need to live with that. Ultimately, however, the flavor side of the CAP Process is as large as the Competitive side at minimum, and such a mindset comes off as particularly elitist and cold. We're all doing this for fun, after all, and what's certainly not fun is feeling your design you spent weeks on got owned because we decided last minute the Bug/Fighting type should also have Water Veil.
Secondary is often not a necessary stage and we could partially solve the problem OP confronts by not having it as much. There's more to be done in terms of the why and when we should have a Secondary Ability stage at all, but that's not something I'm looking to answer right now. Strictly speaking, if there's no Secondary Poll to overlap with Art Poll, there's no worry of flavor impacting our Ability choice.

 

[spoo]

Bumping this thread so we can clean out the prc pipeline and maybe make room for some new proposals before CAP 38. I agree that there just isn't a happy medium place where this stage can happen. There will always be some sort of tradeoff. Our design philosophy places competitive interests above flavor, but there's always a line with this stuff. If we move things around so that flavor impacts the competitive process 3% less, but we end up making artists' jobs 300% harder (exaggerating numbers for illustration), it's not worth it.

Doesn't seem like there's support here for shifting the order of the secondary ability stage again (my stance as well). I'll be shutting the door on the OP's proposal unless a wave of support comes through. Still, I know there's a lot of dissastisfaction with other parts of the stage - much of which I also share. I'd like to open up the floor for other ways we might be able to address the issues with this stage.

Anyone can see our track record with secondary abilities and come to the conclusion that we usually screw things up. Most are useless, the rest are broken. Cresceidon is the only one in recent memory that actually hit the sweet spot, but I agree with zetalz's assessment that this is sorta the exception to the rule. Shox is an outlier in a different way; again, as zetalz pointed out, this was more of a "wait, redo!" course-correction, since our primary wasn't quite viable to begin with. So why is our failure rate so high with secondaries?

I think this quote from a post Darek made during Hemo's secondary stage helps get to the heart of it:

It should go without saying that a Pokemon is greater than the sum of its parts- that much of a Pokemon's value is derived from how its typing, stats, movepool, and ability synergize. Yet in CAP, we opt to segment these components into separate stages, as it makes little sense to discuss all components at once. As a result, we often lose sight of how each of these components interacts with one another, but these interactions are essential nonetheless. This is what it means for CAP to aim for a "cohesive" product- the options that we choose in each stage must work together to make a coherent Pokemon with a clear purpose. Trying to do two things at once is antithetical to a cohesive product, as any two routes do not exist in isolation from one another, and as such often come at odds with one another. If we do want to make a CAP that is able to fit multiple routes, it is not something that we can simply decide past the halfway mark of the process and expect little consequence. This is why Secondary Ability makes little sense for most CAPs, and is why we have seen undesirable outcomes with Secondary Ability in the past.

Click to collapse...

My experience is that secondaries most frequently arise out of a "more is better" philosophy - i.e., sure we already achieved the concept, but what if we achieved it Even More? This is not a mindset I believe is practical or sustainable. The stage is also sometimes seen as an opportunity to hand out a different ability to “fix” the product, for those who are unhappy with the current state of affairs. This too is an unproductive approach, for hopefully obvious reasons.

If we accept that useless secondaries are bad, and broken secondaries are bad, the fix is either better secondaries or fewer secondaries. Maybe both. But either way, I don't want to step on the community's toes in pursuit of a solution. I think a proposal like "the TLT can freely decide whether or not to run the stage at all" is not in the spirit of this project. Requiring a higher voting threshold for a SA (e.g. putting NCA vs Secondary head-to-head and requiring a 60% supermajority for Secondary to win) has also been proposed in the past. I didn't hate this one at first, but after more consideration, it feels a bit paternalistic - essentially putting in arbitrary guardrails to protect the community from itself. The solution may also be a natural culture shift. This doesn't necessarily need to be a policy change; I think CAP is increasingly growing aware of this problem in our public discourse, and could simply self-correct.

That said, my preferred solution is one that doug shared in our modchat when a similar discussion was taking place a couple years ago.

DougJustDougRole — 4/30/24, 7:17 PM​

Maybe it’s as simple as — NCA will no longer be a polling option in Secondary Ability. If intelligent community consensus in the secondary ability discussion indicates that no competitive ability is needed, then the TLT will make that determination. But if a secondary ability is deemed appropriate, then a slate of options will be composed and polled like normal.​

For a long time now, NCA has probably been something better suited to be decided by ICC rather than by a poll.​

Hoping to close this thread in a week or two, I know earthflax has other proposals waiting in the wings...

 

[Zetalz]

Rest of spoo's post good, big agree, no notes.

That said, my preferred solution is one that doug shared in our modchat when a similar discussion was taking place a couple years ago.

DougJustDougRole — 4/30/24, 7:17 PMMaybe it’s as simple as — NCA will no longer be a polling option in Secondary Ability. If intelligent community consensus in the secondary ability discussion indicates that no competitive ability is needed, then the TLT will make that determination. But if a secondary ability is deemed appropriate, then a slate of options will be composed and polled like normal.For a long time now, NCA has probably been something better suited to be decided by ICC rather than by a poll.

Click to collapse...

Would like to throw my support behind this solution as it's essentially what I briefly brainstormed in my prior post, but stated far more succinctly. Having Secondary's use-case be something for the entire TLT to discuss is also a positive addition I feel, as putting all the pressure on just the Ability Leader to 'make the right call' when judging its necessity would be less than ideal, and helps communicate clearly to the community that any decision made was done so with proper consideration.

 

[dex]

So, Analytic Obliteryx happened.

After talking on Discord, I think there is actually a better option for what to do with Secondary Ability than what I discussed in the other thread.

TL;DR: Make Secondary Ability a part of the Primary Ability stage and discussion.

Secondary ability has for a very long time been troublesome for the process. It was moved to be after flavor back in Gen 8 due to causing undue stress on artists during Miasmaw and has been stuck in a weird quasi-competitive/flavor mishmash state since. This is not good. All of this stems from when secondary ability has traditionally been done, which is after stats. I think that this is generally a mistake. As I have mentioned in a separate thread, secondary ability has the capability to impact stats, yet we do it after stats. I should not need to explain why this is nonsensical. We also don't want to delay art for it since it has an impact on art. It's a pretty difficult place to be, and so I think it requires a small rework of the ability process to fix.

My proposal is thus: Secondary ability discussion and, if necessary, polling happens directly after primary ability is voted on, before the Threats and Defining Moves stages. What does this accomplish? By doing this, we can inform the rest of the process more holistically by knowing what competitive abilities a CAP will have access to. Ability is the second most impactful stage for a CAP (which is why we do it second, after Typing), so it makes plenty of sense to discuss all there is to do with abilities at once. Secondary ability has the potential to have a large impact on what a CAP becomes (see Shox and Obliteryx) and it is wrong of us to discuss it so late into the process. Also, importantly, moves and stats can now be informed by the secondary ability instead of the us blindly tacking one on at the end of the process. I envision this revamped Ability stage to go like this:

1. Primary ability discussion
2. Primary ability voting
3. Secondary ability discussion (including whether or not it is necessary or in keeping with our current vision of the CAP)
4. Secondary ability poll (if necessary)

Now, I do want to touch on art, which is why secondary ability got moved to the end of the process in the first place. By combining secondary ability with the primary ability stage, we give artists a much larger amount of time to incorporate both abilities (if there are two) into their work. I think this is plenty lenient given that many artists do not have a solid design (or even start on one) until after ability is decided. If anything, this actually increases the amount of time artists have to work on a CAP by increasing the length of the ability stage. I understand that some would be disgruntled about having to work in two abilities, but to be honest, and I don't mean to be rude when I say this, that's just CAP. We give artists the challenge of working with the competitive elements we decide, and secondary ability is so obviously a competitive element it would be dishonest to have it anywhere else in the process.

Thanks for listening to my TED Talk, I genuinely think this is an obvious solution that should be implemented at least for Generation 10.

 

[quziel]

Doing both abilities sequentially is likely better for the health of the CAPs we make and shouldn't affect art timetables too much. Also we should require that the secondary beats NCA by a 2-1 ratio.

Boom

 

[Guingil]

Disclaimer that I am far less experienced than the other voices in the thread. My only firsthand experience with a secondary ability is with Obliteryx's (I came back to CAP by submitting Marvel Scale for Shox's secondary, so I guess that counts as well).

I am opposed to dex’s proposal for a Combined Ability stage. Secondary Ability being delayed to after Stats was a response to the unstructured approach before the Aurumoth debacle, which sometimes included a Combined Ability stage and consecutive polls. This led to problems our predecessors identified and wanted to solve. Brigtel pointed out that many old CAPs have multiple competitive abilities and use them well, which led me to look for why Secondary is placed where it is, i.e., after Stats. Korski’s proposal is how it came about, to the best of my knowledge from one search:

I had my concerns about a Combined Ability stage even before I found this, but it is helpful to have a reference to point out how it could be worse than what we currently have.

One of the main issues pointed out in the 2013 thread is that if two abilities demand different things for concept fulfilment, stats are incentivized to cater towards both. The extreme example was Aurumoth, which had three different abilities (Weak Armor, No Guard, Illusion). It had everything in stats because it could be reasoned to need everything (BMB’s hand in this is not to be understated, as they really wanted a legendary Bug with a high stat total). However, back then, there was also a string of bulky attackers in CAP, which Korski attributed to this dual focus. Tanks are still a preferred build in modern CAP. Two abilities demand an intersection of their individual needs, a necessarily narrower space than either ability alone. “One ability, one focus” also retains the freedom to explore more extreme, unbalanced builds that are still pro-concept. CAP already dislikes these and has yet to vote for a spread with any individual stat over 135, for example (unless it’s locked behind a transformation, like Ramnarok). I don't think there is a need to tip the scales further towards balanced builds, as these are ultimately only a subset of our usable creative space.

Even if two abilities are not different in their demands, building while considering two things at a time is generally a more difficult task. Compulsive yapper that I am, I still had a really hard time last process answering Ability leader viol and bass's question about how the Opportunist bluffing interactions would pan out with a secondary ability. Voters like new, unproven toys in CAP such as Opportunist (and Electromorphosis, to a lesser extent), which makes mapping out interactions complicated. Despite our efforts, Analytic benefited to some extent from Opportunist dissuading setup in teambuilding. I much prefer the deep dives afforded to us with a single addition at a time with the current process. Even in a "simpler" one like Obliteryx's, we had a fascinating exploration of conditionality with Beak Blast + Opportunist that was ultimately, after PPL, deemed enough from both viability and concept adherence angles (ok maybe I had the first post there but I think that is the community consensus?). Sort of futile to speak of "what if"s, but I think no-Knock Off routes as well as our allowable Attack stat become bigger question marks if Analytic were voted earlier. Then we have to reconsider the impact of those on Opportunist sets, and so on, and ultimately we have our attention divided.

The current paired competitive processes of Secondary Ability and PPL, where Secondary can be removed, are pretty effective (yes, Moveset is in between but it can be targeted by PPL as well). If the nerf package to Obliteryx pans out as intended, to future battlers it will simply be a pretty good mon (like Chuggalong and Hemogoblin). To us who have experienced Red Card Analytic, it was during the period expressly meant to test it out in the field for the first time.

I checked the last few processes, where community answers to whether a secondary is required have mostly been, "No, it's not required; however, it might be interesting to explore some additional aspects with the current kit." Similar to some other suggestions, I think a shift to interpreting "ambivalent" as a "no" rather than a "yes" could be something to try, combined with Doug's proposal of NCA being separate from polls (which is how Chuggalong played out too, btw). Rather than this being cut and dry, we could come up with a stage explanation/statement write-up to be linked in the OP as suggested reading, like for Stat Limits. dex's point about two viable routes being more oppressive on offensive mons and spoo's point about an informal "variety budget" from Chuggalong's thread seem like reasonable inclusions to justify NCA, among others. We'd need to find common ground for this first, as there is often disagreement about the purpose of the stage, ranging from opinions that agree with Korski's original vision to quziel's point (I think) that the secondary is a place to hedge our bets on viability.

 

[earthflax]

Although I can't pretend it was my intention to prompt this line of dialogue, I am happy to see it; I have many issues with Secondary Ability as a stage beyond simply the timing of it. I'm going to start on a pretty broad line of thinking, so be warned.

I guess the most important question for any sort of 2A (im going to use this acronym because it's preferable to the other one. this is not a post about gun rights) discussion is just going to be what its purpose really is. This is hard because it's different if you ask different people and, indeed, it's different based on the individual CAP process or even OU pokemon analogue, especially when we take practical outcomes into account. Just look at our different processes, and what roles Secondary Abilities have fulfilled.

Take Shox's process, where Secondary Ability acted like a savior or a get-out-of-jail-free card for a process that was hyperfocused on a route that otherwise would not have worked. Or Jumbao and Equilibra's secondaries, which allow the 'mons to shape their own playstyle in the builder and customize their matchups, and have been/are the target of ire and (in the former's case) nerfs for years and years now. Hemo's secondary, which, despite being in a process where we could be (and were) more liberal with Secondary Ability than usual, now sits by the wayside as little more than a vehicle for Fragments featured shitmon stalls. Obliteryx's, where we (overly obtusely speaking) tried to take a swing on an Ability with significant upside to emulate Cresc and what its long-idolized 2A stage accomplished, and overshot the mark. This is to say nothing of processes like Naviathan, Miasmaw, and Saharaja, where 2As have been slapped on with some intended purpose (in the former's case, even one encouraged by its concept) that has never really panned out.

There might be superficial similarities in how we discuss things during 2A stages across processes, but the more that I think about it, different 2A stages achieve different things. In the past our Secondaries have been saviors of, equals to, or not competitive with our Primaries, and even within those individual categories they differ. Why is this?

In my eyes, I think that 2A is such a versatile stage because in the eyes of many it's a low-risk aspect of the process, especially in the Post-Play Lookback era. Stats are decided, Defining Moves are decided, Primary Ability and typing are long-decided. There is pretty much an entire kit ready to ship by the time the 2A stage rolls around; of the SS and SV CAPs, every single one could have gone straight to 1.0 with no meaningful changes to their contemporary meta state except Shox (and a little bit of Cresc's usage on sun/offense). Maybe that's not a good measure, but regardless of what you want to use as a yardstick, most of our Secondaries are highly useless and highly gratuitous, and its spot in the process pretty much necessitates that. Sometimes it pays off (Shox, Cresc) and sometimes it flops or backfires (Hemo, Obliteryx). But it's never really an addition that's made with a ton of weight, and therein lies the problem. There is no material consequence to the result of contemporary Secondary Ability stages, in terms of both metagame and process ramifications. If we fail we either knock it off in PPL or just allow that slot to rot for eternity, and if we succeed we treat it as a resounding success and a testament to the value of 2A stages as we know them. And to be completely honest, if we want to continue to do this (which I don't even oppose as strongly as my language is implying), 2A is perfectly positioned and perfectly run. To be honest, though, it really irks me that this stage is so insanely immaterial. We really only respect and engage with this stage in its current form because of how unimportant it is to the final product (and how reversible it is if it were to ever be important). But there are very marked tradeoffs regardless of how we move forward with this stage.

When we've talked about ways to fix the 2A stage, a lot of it has revolved around emphasizing its optional nature. It's pretty weak, though, to continue to place a stage like 2A near the end of a process while emphasizing the fact that it's optional. Does it change a lot? Frankly, I don't think so. Whenever we arrive at 2A in contemporary processes, despite the fact that our kit is pretty much complete, we still do not have a ton of information on how it plays. The only thing that we really preserve by locking 2A behind the gate of ICC or strong pro-Secondary sentiment is its usability as a failsafe in those rare but real instances where we think that our current kit up to that point is doomed. This is fine, although a pretty lame spot to leave the stage, but the confounding variable there is that we don't know what kits need saving. Even if we take Shox to be the ultimate example of a failsafe 2A stage, this is still true. I was the Ability Leader for Shox. I had no idea EMorph would be dix, and I had no idea Sticky Hold would be the universally used ability. So really, the one potentially good function (one that's still outclassed by PPL, like Zetalz mentioned 67 years ago) is actually not good at all, leaving us with no good functions. If we leave 2A in the place that it is right now and treat it as a stage that needs to be insisted upon to even happen, it does no good whatsoever.

We can't keep everything that 2A is when we move it or change its structure while fixing this issue, though. We can't keep its usage as a failsafe like w/Shox while also adding actual weight to the stage. We can't move it forward in the process, lending it more weight and consideration, without crippling its reversibility. By changing where the 2A stage falls in the process, you change the stage's identity entirely. The question ends up being whether or not that is a bad thing.

And this (after like 5k characters lol xd) brings me to the current proposal. Make no mistake about it, combining the Ability stages in the way that dex describes is not just moving an existing stage to a different spot in the process or changing some (overall fairly immaterial) interactions with polling sequences or parallel progression with flavor. It would more closely resemble the complete deletion of the 2A stage as we know it and the accompanying expansion of the Primary/Competitive Ability stage. There are massive differences in process completion and priorities between our (the status quo's) 2A and dex's to the point that, aside from deciding the exact same aspect of the mon, I do not envision the two to have even a passing similarity in discussion. This would not do for the current way in which we treat our 2A stage; it seems pretty ridiculous to envision a combined Abilities stage placed before Defining Moves, where our only nailed-down aspects are our typing and our concept, to produce something like Neutralizing Gas / Compound Eyes, or Opportunist / Analytic, or Electromorphosis / Sticky Hold. But its benefits are also pretty significant: most importantly, there is actual significance to the decisions that we make in a combined Ability stage. It also opens us up to concepts and general visions for concept actualization that revolve around the (actual, real) use of a Secondary Ability; this is a class of ideas that is pretty quickly stifled at the start of each CAP Process, because there often a) isn't enough impetus/upside to change stage order while b) any Secondary Ability must already be informed by pretty much every other competitive stage. In fact, I think this is the best usage for dex's proposed 2A stage, and the fact that the process would be restructured in this way would likely create an environment that is less hostile to concepts that specify things like that.

So what are the solutions? dex's proposal is one of them, for sure, because it gives 2A real weight and it implicitly emphasizes the fact that there needs to be a very strong and specific justification for 2A (one which will 99% of the time come from the concept at that stage in the process), therefore ensuring that our additions are not gratuitous and that our future stages are designed with these Abilities in mind, rather than the other way around (which, in my opinion, is the better outcome if there needs to be a strong want for 2A for it to exist at all). If we are building for two Abilities under dex's proposal, it will be for a good reason. Another proposal, though not one that I'm championing by any means, is to fully play into the failsafe/reactive role and move 2A to PPL (or some other time after the 1.0 release). This opens its own can of worms but it owns and plays into the identity that 2A currently is most often assumed to or used to fill. Lastly (though this isn't an exhaustive list), we could maintain the status quo and implicitly accept that 2A is a freebie, low-impact stage that people are going to want to use however they want, which in itself will vary process by process.

My lame position here is that I don't have a position. Sorry guys. Yea I wrote like a million words just to yap and raise some points for those who actually do form opinions i guess. I don't like 2A as it it currently though, and I don't think there is a lot of downside to dex's proposal, but his proposal creates an entirely different stage from what we know as 2A, which should be scrutinized on that front.

That's it really for me, sorry if i'm incoherent, hmu here or on discord to chat about whatever yall could understand tho

Last thoughts that I didn't know where to fit:
-The superfluous nature of 2A as it stands makes a mockery of the increasingly iterative nature of CAP. If your idea of iteration is throwing on random shit with little material consequence individually with the expectation that it can be removed if it's too much, what you're doing is limit testing, not iterating. (To be blunt, this is also true for most proposals for arguably competitive moves, of which Focus Punch is probably the most notable, but also shit like Topsy-Turvy. Does Obliteryx look like an octopus? Stop trying to sneak that stuff in. Thanks.)
-Once this whole thing gets decided can we please delete soft and secondary ban lists? thanks

 

[quziel]

I think I'm actually gonna swap my opinion. I think the current process mostly works fine, with a few edge cases (yes analytic obli is a pain and super cheesy, no, its not actually that far out of the bounds of what secondary should be).

We should run a simple yes or no poll immediately after primary ability asking "Do we think a secondary is needed for this mon". This should be pre-stats so that we can adjust our stat submissions (slightly) to account for the increased power budget from either having a secondary or not. Would this realistically reduce the amount of secondary abilities that we end up picking? Probably not because people like playing around with new toys. Equally moving the implied NCA vote here rather than as part of secondary ability is probably better.

 

[spoo]

discussion of this thread can also go here now

Earthflax is correct that this is really more about what the purpose of this stage should be. In order to decide whether this stage keeps missing or not, we need to decide what the target actually is.

The purpose / desired outcome of the Secondary Ability stage has rarely (if ever...?) been explicitly defined, though the 2013 thread Guingil linked is a good starting point. Frankly I find the stage's place in modern CAP to be very nebulous and vibes-based. We typically have multiple different schools of thought competing, and no unifying rules or expectations to point to, which ends up in individual contributors interpreting the stage however best suits their individual ideals - not great for a community project. Right now, it's understood by most people that the Secondary Ability should be "worse" than the Primary - after all, we have a much more restrictive banlist for it, and common sense says that tossing on a ridiculously strong option late in the process would throw all previous power budget calculations out the window. I think that's where our shared understandings of the stage end, though. This isn't nearly concrete enough to work with, nor is it even a steadfast rule (see Shox).

I don't want to spend too much time hashing out some greater philosophical understanding about this stage - we will be here forever, and I would like to get a policy outcome on paper soon. Nonetheless, I'd like to provide my own individual interpretation of the stage to serve as context for my preferred route forward.

For a secondary to be worthwhile, it should A) do no harm and B) do something useful [...] There are many considerations here: will a secondary ability be overpowered, will it lead to unhealthy gameplay dynamics, will it cannibalize options from the primary ability or vice versa; and will it see use at all, will it save a project from unviability, will it let us explore another avenue of the concept, or will it let us explore the main avenue more deeply.

Click to collapse...

This post from Oblitery'x Secondary Ability stage is a decent summation of where I stand. In cases where the secondary isn't tied to concept success, secondary abilities are definitionally superfluous, regardless of where the stage goes in the process. We don't need them. So, will the presence of a secondary ability ever constrain our main route - the route we've identified IS needed to fulfill the concept? If the answer is yes, we've broken the first clause of "do no harm." We should not permit the unnecessary to limit the necessary. Alternatively, look at a case like Shox's: despite Sticky Hold entirely overshadowing the primary and thus violating our single collective priority, I believe this stage was successful because it ultimately benefited the process & end result. This isn't to say that the ends justified the means; rather, that Sticky Hold never constrained our necessary path and harmed Shox's process/product, because it itself had become what was needed for project success in that moment.

On the other side of the coin, we've opted many times for low-risk, but also low-confidence, secondaries that Might have a useful outcome and Probably Won't have a harmful outcome, and they routinely end up as useless additions. Part of it may be a desire to hedge our bets, in case the primary ends up weaker than anticipated; part of it may be disgruntled individuals wanting to "fix" the process after a personally unsatisfying Primary Ability outcome; it could be the result of a simple "more = better" or "something > nothing" mindset; or perhaps from a genuine interest in experimentation, motivated by the pure goal of learning as much as we can. These motives are compounded by fact that handing out a low-power secondary is ostensibly costless, from a process POV. Still, a wager or experiment that fails (in this case, by being useless) is still a failure, regardless of what little information we may glean from it, and I don't believe we should be normalizing these failed outcomes.

My understanding of the Secondary Ability stage would cast a few of our recent secondaries as failures, but like, let's step back from Obliteryx and take a sober look at the past. We've had six CAPs this generation: Hemogoblin (voted for a secondary, failed); Cresceidon (voted for a secondary, very successful); Chuggalong (TLT decided not to hold a vote); Shox (voted for a secondary, weird but successful); Ramnarok (pre-decided no secondary); and Obliteryx (voted for a secondary, failed). We're batting .500, but I'd argue Chuggalong's stage was run successfully and call us three for five, not counting Ram. If we go back to SS, Compound Eyes Miasmaw was a flop, and Serene Grace Raja was mid but at least interacted with the concept. A little worse, but I don't think the calculus changes a ton. It's important to recognize that Analytic Obliteryx is an outlier, too - most secondaries fail by being too weak.

I think there's enough evidence that we should be giving out fewer secondaries altogether, and stronger secondaries when we do. But is there evidence that we need structural changes to the Secondary Ability stage? Maybe some, but I don’t think a complete overhaul is a measured response. Oftentimes, I see a desire to change The System whenever we get an outcome we don’t like. I’m not really sure that The System is at fault more than our shared goals and standards as a community in this case.

So, if the Secondary Ability stage should not constrain our identified main route or break our power/versatility scale, and should provide Some Tangible Benefit to the process or product, this basically defines the stage as an opportunistic afterthought. I think that's what it should be. Moving the stage immediately after Primary Ability would give us more time to build towards our secondary route and would likely end up in more accurately balanced secondaries, which is great; on the other hand, it risks clouding our main route and muddying the waters of the subsequent stages, and could incentivize choosing secondary abilities more often since we know we'll have more time to build around them. I don't think the benefit of having better-balanced unnecessary shit is worth the potential of having greater constraint on the shit we actually want and need.

With that context out of the way, here's some ideas for what could happen moving forward:

1. Never run Secondary Ability unless the concept demands it
If it's necessary, we run it after Primary - if we don't think it's necessary, no biggie, we can do without. This basically nukes the stage in the majority of processes, though, and ignores that there are real benefits the Secondary Ability stage can provide even when not strictly needed. I think this is a reactionary response to what ultimately isn't thaaat big of a problem.

2. Intelligent community consensus & the TLT will determine whether a secondary ability is appropriate, rather than a poll
Instead of running a secondary ability poll as a matter of course, we'll let the TLT decide whether or not it's necessary based on intelligent discussion in the thread. This is what we did for Chuggalong, so it's technically not a real change. If a secondary is deemed appropriate, then NCA will be removed from the poll options.

3. Let the TL / Ability SL run Secondary Ability immediately after Primary Ability if they so choose
Another one that's technically not a real change, we've done similar stuff in the past e.g. Jumbao. This is sorta just a reminder that it's an option. We can decide this during Concept Assessment, or even at the end of Primary Ability before voting. I specify "before voting" because I believe this needs to be concept-driven and not ability-driven; that is to say, running the two stages subsequently shouldn't be dependent on what primary ability wins, but rather what the concept calls for.

4. Shorten the Secondary Ability banlist
The latter half of "fewer or stronger secondaries." Kinda funny as a solution, since so much work has been done in the past to make these ability banlists more restrictive. Part of the reason Secondary Ability can be so frustrating is that it feels like so few options fall within the golden mean of what's appropriate, but more to the point, the strength of an ability largely depends on what the rest of the CAP looks like. I'd propose using the same banlist as Primary Ability, however, I don't want the Secondary Ability stage to turn into Primary's rehashed nachos and people subbing powerful abilities out of the gate. Maybe we turn the current Secondary Ability banlist into soft bans, and allow soft-banned primary abilities to be appealed under exceptional circumstances as well.

5. Something else
Idk, hit me with what you got. I'm passing the mic to you guys now.

My preferred solution is being more proactive early in the process (Concept Assment and Primary Ability) about whether a secondary is actually needed for project success, and running Secondary Ability after Primary Ability if so; if not, run Secondary Ability at the normal time, allowing the TLT to declare NCA based on intelligent consensus; and in general, be more critical of poorly-made arguments for useless or broken secondary abilities when the stage comes around. If we see a high-confidence opportunity for an ability within the "golden mean," we should take it. If we don't see a clear opportunity, then we need to be comfortable and confident sticking to our main route. The latter will be the case the vast majority of the time. As leaders and contributors, we need to be more honest with ourselves about when these opportunities actually present themselves; we are evidently pretty poor at making that judgment call in the past.

Loose deadline of one week on this thread, the new CAP is starting & it's been open for a long time already

 

[dex]

preferred solution is being more proactive early in the process (Concept Assment and Primary Ability) about whether a secondary is actually needed for project success, and running Secondary Ability after Primary Ability if so; if not, run Secondary Ability at the normal time, allowing the TLT to declare NCA based on intelligent consensus; and in general, be more critical of poorly-made arguments for useless or broken secondary abilities when the stage comes around. If we see a high-confidence opportunity for an ability within the "golden mean," we should take it. If we don't see a clear opportunity, then we need to be comfortable and confident sticking to our main route. The latter will be the case the vast majority of the time. As leaders and contributors, we need to be more honest with ourselves about when these opportunities actually present themselves; we are evidently pretty poor at making that judgment call in the past.

Click to collapse...

I’ve talked too much about this to say more. I support this and it should be implemented.

 

[shnowshner]

i'm 90% out of smogon as a whole until the next generation comes around & going through a lot in personal so don't put too much value into what i say

imo secondary should really be weighed more based on how "impactful" our primary is. if our primary ability is doing something fundamental to how the pokemon is supposed to perform and expected to play and be played against don't even bother with a real secondary. if our primary is mostly complimenting a overarching goal the cap can achieve even without its presence then a secondary has more reason to be considered. i.e. pixilate vs intimidate hemogoblin. the reasoning for intimidate was it makes our average defensive stats better + our typing is decent vs stuff, this shit doesn't matter because we have pixiespeed and that's what we should be doing every single time what are you on about.

i do wonder if part of the reason we have this issue is because we emphasize getting ability done first and since we're doing it early on when the cap is still mostly without much form there is elevated pressure to give it some sort of "edge" that enables it to stand out. typically we frontload the most essential aspects of a cap towards the beginning since they inform the most, and as the process goes on more and more stages are about rounding out the cap into a complete package. if we did abilities more towards the end maybe we wouldn't have such a wide gap of viability between the first and second choices. not saying that we should do this but that this is why it happens, and perhaps lends credence to the idea that doing secondary ability soon after primary isn't that bad of an idea.

 

[Guingil]

Thoughts as I find myself as the Ability SL for CAP38. It's a daunting task to handle something presently contentious for my first run, and I'm sure my perspectives will evolve as I lead the stage, as I'm sure it has for those who have led it before. I ask that my opinions here not be weighed differently since I am in the "driver's seat" now. In fact, since I am at the wheel, it would be wiser to trust people who can read the map better when I focus on my task ahead. All the same, I believe the following:

1. The current structure of Primary Ability > Stats > Secondary Ability makes sense

Basically reiterating Korski's point from 2013, I believe that Stats being sandwiched between Primary and Secondary helps mitigate some of the arbitrary "primacy" we associate with an ability. I say arbitrary because we know that it really depends on the Pokemon and concept and even the set as to how important an ability is to a Pokemon's functioning; for Kyurem, Pressure is critical for SubTect but not so much so for its Choice Specs set, and so on. The current placement of stages facilitates things such as a stat-ball if we think a more situational ability like Opportunist is enough for concept fulfillment. Even in the last process, I believe one stated reason for the TL's -1 of Stakeout was that it was too constraining on further stages. I do not think Obliteryx would've reached its final stats had they been designed around both Opportunist (which doesn't place too much burden on stats) and Analytic (which does), biasing stats towards the higher impact considerations even if the community had chosen the former as its first choice.

shnowshner's post above identifies that Primary Ability being placed earlier in the process puts more pressure on it to be defining. But as they have shown, there could just as easily be arguments to place it later, where we would be saying that stats are more important to defining a CAP. This can always be up for debate. The current system has the best of both worlds: an ability that drives stat considerations, and one that is driven by them. This is the best middle ground while following Game Freak's choice to design most Pokemon with more than one ability. We of course cannot have two stats and two typings with the same ability, like Hoopa, unless it's a framework, but even there, I would say this sandwich structure around the fixed thing would make sense.

Additionally, although both the original proposal and current consensus are that the secondary should be less defining to the mon's functioning, sometimes it can be concept-saving such as in the case of Shox. I initially disliked this, thinking Shox should have been allowed to wallow in Electromorphosis mediocrity, but recently I've been thinking this is a neat use of the stage in line with the original reasoning for it ("bring a mon up to the meta's standards"). I think this should remain a possibility, although with a higher bar than it has had before.

2. Unless the concept explicitly calls for it, do not run the Ability Stages back-to-back

My arguments here rest on the assumption that people will be more incentivized to hedge their bets with a secondary given the lack of information at the earlier stage. So, if we do end up with a process with two voted abilities, I believe this risks us diluting our focus and leads to a Stats stage that has to try to cater to both abilities while making every stage thereafter more difficult. This was an identified problem that led to a string of bulky attackers, and we should not reintroduce this and miss out on the possibility of a cool single-ability mon like Chuggalong. All a bit hypothetical, as people could just vote for one ability off the bat. I don't know. But the single-focus CAP process we have now allows for some deep dives and is a gem that shouldn't be risked.

Thus, I support this option:

Intelligent community consensus & the TLT will determine whether a secondary ability is appropriate, rather than a poll
Instead of running a secondary ability poll as a matter of course, we'll let the TLT decide whether or not it's necessary based on intelligent discussion in the thread. This is what we did for Chuggalong, so it's technically not a real change. If a secondary is deemed appropriate, then NCA will be removed from the poll options.

Click to collapse...

In making this decision, we could take into account factors like an informal "variety budget," as we do for a power budget, where we recognize that variety is also a part of a Pokemon's strength; and the fact that variety on an offensive, game ending mon like Chuggalong through a secondary is more oppressive than variety on a tamer defensive mon.

Regarding the point about shortening banned list abilities, I say we can trial this as well.

Again, just to reiterate, I would be happy to implement whichever option we collectively decide is the best here, and even agree to some extent that if we want to try something different, it might be better to do so now rather than with the uncertainty of a new generation process.

 

[spoo]

Closing this and formalizing part of what I outlined in my last post, which seems to be uncontroversial.

2. Intelligent community consensus & the TLT will determine whether a secondary ability is appropriate, rather than a poll
Instead of running a secondary ability poll as a matter of course, we'll let the TLT decide whether or not it's necessary based on intelligent discussion in the thread. This is what we did for Chuggalong, so it's technically not a real change. If a secondary is deemed appropriate, then NCA will be removed from the poll options.

Click to collapse...

3. Let the TL / Ability SL run Secondary Ability immediately after Primary Ability if they so choose
Another one that's technically not a real change, we've done similar stuff in the past e.g. Jumbao. This is sorta just a reminder that it's an option. We can decide this during Concept Assessment, or even at the end of Primary Ability before voting. I specify "before voting" because I believe this needs to be concept-driven and not ability-driven; that is to say, running the two stages subsequently shouldn't be dependent on what primary ability wins, but rather what the concept calls for.

Click to collapse...

We'll be leaving the secondary ability banlist untouched for now, though this is something that can always be revisited.