Policy Review Policy Review: Updates Adjustments (Mid-Update Review)

Deck Knight

Blast Off At The Speed Of Light! That's Right!
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Policy Review: Updates Adjustments (Mid-Update Review)

Approved by: DougJustDoug

Welcome to the Policy Review to assess our new updates process as we approach the second round of CAPs. In this thread we will discuss some of the happenings of our first set as well as our policy going forward. We should start with a major announcement:

Due to a counting error on my part, I must correct the record and state unequivocably the Technician won Arghonaut's Ability Poll. While this is sufficient for that specific topic of Misty Surge vs. Technician, we will also be discussing the scope of abilities eligible for updates, and coming to a more solid conclusion on that matter.

Specifically, CAP Staff has discussed the matter of what we consider "defining abilities." These are effects so powerful that they warp the entire way the Pokemon plays on both an individual and team level. The best example of these effects are Auto-Weather and Auto-Terrain, which are in offensive and team support categories within themselves. Many other Abilities such as Huge Power, Water Bubble, and Magic Bounce have similar warping characteristics, but those are generally restricted to primary discussions to begin with. In general our Secondary Ability Ban List is a a decent guide for many of these discussions, but not a complete one.
Air Lock
Aura Break
Bad Dreams
Battle Bond
Color Change
Dark Aura
Defeatist
Delta Stream
Desolate Land
Disguise
Fairy Aura
Forecast
Fluffy
Full Metal Body
Fur Coat
Huge Power
Illusion
Imposter
Moody
Multitype
Parental Bond
Power Construct
Primordial Sea
Prism Armor
Protean
Pure Power
RKS System
Schooling
Shadow Shield
Shadow Tag
Shields Down
Slow Start
Stance Change
Teravolt
Truant
Turboblaze
Victory Star
Water Bubble
Wonder Guard
Zen Mode

Arena Trap
Comatose
Drizzle
Drought
Electric Surge
Grassy Surge
Innards Out
Magic Bounce
Magic Guard
Misty Surge
Prankster
Psychic Surge
Sand Stream
Snow Warning
Speed Boost

Battery
Big Pecks
Friend Guard
Grass Pelt
Healer
Honey Gather
Illuminate
Pickup
Power of Alchemy
Receiver
Run Away
Symbiosis
Telepathy


It is the consensus of CAP Staff that our Updates, even major ones, should be strongly limited by not redefining our previous CAP creations in ways that change their entire role on a team. To take a few examples of our recent and ongoing CAPs, many are concerned about Triage redefining Revenankh to be more akin to a Gen 7 Talonflame, while Voodoom's updates are considered generally tasteful and modest and Naviathan's significant Ability change in line with that CAP's goals.

To address the process itself, our original concluding discussion left much of out implementation up to the discretion of ULs and GLs. As a result each thread has had its own different style and way of going about discussions. I generally feel this has been healthy overall and will allow us to come to a consensus on a good way to lead updates. While this particular set of updates will be the largest in scale (updating Gen 4 to Gen 7), we would still like a practical policy going forward for major changes in subsequent generations.

With all this background out of the way, we would like to discuss the following subjects in this Policy Review:

Should we have a specific, separate banlist for Updates? Should it incorporate our Primary and / or Secondary Banlists?

Going forward, all our updates will be either "minor" or "consistency" updates. Should we still discuss competitive ability changes in these threads or should discussion be limited to consistency movepool updates?

There is presently a gray area between "competitive" and "flavor" updates which "consistency" is inhabiting. Has this been good or bad for our updates process and the discussions it has been generating?

Of the updates that are ongoing or have been concluded, which do you believe were managed most effectively, and gave you the most sense of remaining true to CAP Update Principles?

- - - - -

Overall I feel like our Updates Process has been largely positive, and these bumps and growing pains we are experiencing are a natural result of allowing flexibility in our process and being able to address excesses as they arise. I think our GLs and ULs have done a broadly fantastic job managing the threads, and I believe once implemented we will have a healthier CAP Metagame where each CAP "feels" complete and relevant as well. Please stick to our initial questions, but other observations or concerns are welcome.
 
Should we have a specific, separate banlist for Updates? Should it incorporate our Primary and / or Secondary Banlists?

We should probably incorporate the Primary Banlist for updates, but not the Secondary one. Randomly sticking Huge Power or Water Bubble on a CAP defeats the purpose of restricting our ability to give mons stat changes. However, if a mon has a primary ability and needs another in order to be even remotely competitive, we shouldn't gimp ourselves on that.

Going forward, all our updates will be either "minor" or "consistency" updates. Should we still discuss competitive ability changes in these threads or should discussion be limited to consistency movepool updates?

If it's minor, we probably should if the ability is the key problem with the mon. There's no excuse to putting a new competitive ability on a pokemon that only needs consistency changes.

There is presently a gray area between "competitive" and "flavor" updates which "consistency" is inhabiting. Has this been good or bad for our updates process and the discussions it has been generating?

We do need to mind our optics. Our community has been dying out for a while now, so things that make our project look unprofessional should probably be avoided. A Pokemon not having the consistency moves that somebody would expect from a Pokemon made by Gamefreak takes people out of the experience and makes the project easy to write off as a "silly fan-boy project". This project honestly is pretty fun, but it can only continue to be enjoyable as long as people continue to engage with the project and the results of the project, and weird inconsistencies in movepool take people out of the experience of interacting with the CAP Pokemon and make them less likely to return. The Substitute Wars for Naviathan and Volkraken are probably the most egregious examples of this from the project itself, to the point we had to take time off from the discussion we had in Policy Review about Policy Adjustment to discuss how stupid that was.

Of the updates that are ongoing or have been concluded, which do you believe were managed most effectively, and gave you the most sense of remaining true to CAP Update Principles?

So I think our Major Updates have been going pretty well all said. We successfully weakened the mons that needed weakening, and Voodoom is looking like a mon that's actually usable. The GLs and ULs are doing a great job keeping discussions on track. Plenty of competitive discussion has sprung up from working on the updates, which has given the community plenty to think about. The discussion on Voodoom in particular was wonderful to partake in. It's also managed to hold engagement during the period before we slate the first concept of the generation while we wait for the metagame to settle.

On the other end of the coin, though, I feel there are a few areas we could improve on.

Firstly, I think the order we've chosen to work on these is slightly weird. Starting with Voodoom and Tomohawk was definitely the right decision, as these two were probably the biggest problem children of the format. Following with Revenahnk also makes sense, since there's quite a bit wrong with that mon. It even makes sense that Krill was the first consistency update, since Krill suffers most from Substitute Syndrome. However, many of the mons that we decided to start with were a bit odd. Aurumoth and Naviathan, even though they were both pretty high on the update spetrum, really only needed an ability switch and a movepool update, and Naviathan already had most of the moves he needed. Plasmanta didn't even need that. It only needed a slight coverage update so it wouldn't be completely outclassed by Tapu Koko and it would actually deal damage when it clicked a move instead of distributing stat and health boosts to the opponent when their mon with immunities or immunity abilities switched in. Compare that to Malaconda, who's team archetype simply doesn't exist, and doesn't fit on really any existing team archetype.

Secondly, I think we undertook too many CAPs at once. having to keep track of all the discussions going on at once is tiring, and probably reducing the overall quality of each individual update.

Thirdly, I think we should strongly consider going ahead and initiating TL and TLT Applications. We've gotten a little more than five months into the generation. As a point of reference, by the five month point of Gen 6, we were on our Second Concept Assessment. Heck, CAP went on a long hiatus right before Gen 5, and we still managed to be voting on TLs by the 5 months point. Sun and Moon are more than 5 months old and we haven't even started on getting the people together to lead the making of a new mon.
 

SHSP

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Moderator
I don't see why we shouldn't discuss competitive ability updates in minor updates. There isn't a real reason where we should hamstring ourselves on improving viability of our creations: if something is judged to have competitive issues with its ability and mainly just its ability, the logical choice is to deal more with the ability problem rather than to have to go to greater lengths in other aspects just to create the same/a similar result.

Consistency updates feel like they need to be branched out more than they currently are. As of now, there has been issues with the scope of them mainly: yes, there has been the addition of universal tm's and logical moves in the vein of a consistency update, but also there has been much discussion on moves that seem to fall to close to flavor but unnecessary, competitive moves, or both: to use examples, Brutal Swing for Navi and Flying Press for Tomo went to poll based off a total flavor based idea, and especially in the case of Navi felt like adding for the sake of adding. These moves don't scream consistency to me: Both getting an (as of now) exclusive move because it shares a typing, Navi having shakey reasoning for a decently wide spread TM seem to fall too far out of the category we seem to aim for (which the way I read it falls more in line with the idea of universal tm's and basic widespread moves of that type/design/etc).


I feel like updates have been relatively hit or miss. In terms of the "hits," Voodoom seems like it's actually in a relatively good spot after it's additions, Auru seems like it's currently on the right track and that we isolated it's biggest issue in Illusion, Navi got what it needed but not to an absurd degree- especially with the focus on DD which was actually bad rather than CM which was good but held back by other factors unrelated to the mon.

The "misses" for me have been Argh based off the polling issue (what is the plan for Argh now, speaking of this? The community built around Misty Surge and aside from NV's earlier post, it's been dead silent on Technician. In addition, the post of discussing whether or not to re-open submissions/polling is relatively unclear as to what's going to end up happening and I feel as though this is a major issue that needs to be fixed sooner rather than later), and Tomo.

I feel like later polling decisions regarding Tomo were lackluster: Flying Press as previously mentioned I feel like did not need to go to a poll, but the real offender in my eyes was Haze. Personally I don't have much of opinion on Haze after considering it, and as such didn't make an argument when the question of Haze's removal was brought up. What bothers me the most about it was Haze never went to poll even in the face of opposition. As mentioned in the thread, 3/9 of those responding to the question found Haze a candidate for removal; the other 6 disagreed. Again, I hold no opinion on Haze itself, but find the reasoning given for a lack of a poll- not enough outcry, not strong enough outcry, too much change were Haze ever threatened to be removed- to be lacking. I feel it was a mistake that the arguments against Haze (which the majority of pro-Haze respondents commented little on) were relatively disregarded and what was a sizable bone of contention was not brought to poll.

Rev and Plasmanta I'm withholding much thought about until they progress further: Plas has just started, and there isn't much to go on there. In terms of Rev, I feel like we dodged a bullet with Poison Heal, but worry we dodged into another's line of fire in Triage. Increasing coverage and power in it's moveset is also a discussion we are currently embroiled in and I really can't say I know enough to comment on them.
 

BP

Beers and Steers
is a Contributor to Smogon
While I don't think Updates are necessarily bad, I do think they are very painful to go through. It's like tearing off a bandage you see. Right now we are tearing off a very sticky bandage stuck to our skin and instead of tearing it off fast and easy we are just slowly peeling it off. This is why updates are so hard and grueling. I don't really have a plan to fix this unfortunately (other than Dis banning our "Beautiful" Democracy we have set up). That being said I just wish these Updates would be held a little bit higher on the Priority list as already takes long enough to shut down poor ideas.

One of the bigger things I would like to bring up is the Timing in which these Updates occurred. They are taking place right around when PSPL and CAPTT are. Not only that but the "Kiddos" in the Room are really itching to get started on CAP 23. Next time we do something like this we need to create a timeline first and look at what the Next few months are going to look like in terms of activity.

These are really the main issues with the update process as it is currently. The next time we are going to Undergo something very large and time consuming such as this I think a PRC thread needs to put up so we can all, as a community, decide whether or not this is the appropriate time to undertake a large project.
 

Deck Knight

Blast Off At The Speed Of Light! That's Right!
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Top CAP Contributor Alumnusis a Top Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus
We had an entire PRC thread on doing updates, in that thread the timeline for an update was much, much shorter than the time it has actually taken to do them.

Updates were started *before* any of those other things were. We did not collectively "decide" to do this in the middle of something as your post seems to imply.
 

HeaLnDeaL

Let's Keep Fighting
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Now that updates are nearly done, I realize my reply won't entirely be a "mid update" comment but I still find it important to share my opinions on updates as a whole. Note that this post has been several days in the making and I've been forming these opinions over the last month or two after talking to numerous peoples about updates.

I... I'm going to continue my trend of being a Negative Nancy and say that I think these updates have largely been a big failure at worst and at best a troublesome time suck. By the time this mid update thread was created, we identified several problems, including:

  • Straying away from our update principles
  • Lack of consistency between leadership of threads
  • Disagreements over how much new additions (namely abilities) are allowed to redefine a role for a CAP
  • Time schedules as suggested by the updates conclusion not only being not followed, but completely and totally ignored with thread length for mons lasting weeks longer than they should have
This thread identified many of these problems and they have also been discussed by CAP Staff. What I find disheartening is that despite us knowing these flaws, absolutely nothing was done to stop them (or qt least not nearly enough). In addition to the above, below are some additional huge flaws that I see with this process and some of my potential solutions (yes, some are more of an argument for my opinion but I've talked to a ton of people about updates and need to share these). Some of these points blur into one another because of their relations.

  • The major/minor/consistency update poll was very arguably a big mistake. These labels' definitions were never agreed upon and anything with a minor or higher label was suddenly given the green light to make huge changes in viability. The results of the poll were at best ignored and at worst used as a permission slip to deviate from a mon's former identity. What's more is that once this poll took place, any prior discussion was ignored. We went into updates wanting consistency updates without aiming to artificially inflate/deflate the viability of any mons with the exception of heated discussion regarding nerfing Aurumoth and Tomohawk. The update "level" poll completely changed this and turned it into a free for all.
  • One of our updates principles was conserving the identity of our CAPs, yet the update threads rarely tried to adequately define the identity or the role. I advised many ULs to talk about roles, and even some of the better ones didn't until after discussion has already blossomed into a pile of disputes. It absolutely should have been a rule that all updates started with defining the identity of the CAP, and if one was lacking then one should have been newly assigned.
  • Lack of following through with a timetable was awful. I believe having that role/identity definition being the first thing discussed would have overwhelmingly focused discussions and sped up the next things. So much time was wasted by randomly having identity disputes in page 3 or 4 of a thread after a bunch of other things had been discussed out of order. Starting things with an identity discussion (1-3 days), then moving onto abilities (2-5 days), and then moves (2-4 days for competitive, another 3 or so for consistency/full movepools) is not only feasible but gives clear expectations. A downright cemented in schedule could be distracting and some flexibility is expected, but when a mon that should have taken a week from deck's original schedule ends up taking a month to be updated, then we have problems.
  • UL applications were too lenient and needed stricter measures to make sure qualified people were in leadership positions. CAP staff argued about this before updates had happened and leniency was essentially forced in to get updates moving faster and I believe this was a poor decision. Applicants need to be considered serious contributors with the ability to lead. This is something too serious to learn on the job how to be a good contributor.
  • UL "style variation" was deemed distracting at the start of this very thread. I think the major/minor/consistency poll and the lack of consistency in defining these labels was a huge cause of UL "style variation." ULs should have been given much clearer instructions (relating to schedules and the order of ideal topics) and all updates should have been purely consistency except when nerfing mons deemed to overpowered for the metagame (this was the philosophy echoed in the pre update PRC thread but completely ignored when updates actually started).
  • All updates should have been purely consistency except when nerfing mons deemed to overpowered for the metagame (this was the philosophy echoed in the pre update PRC thread but completely ignored when updates actually started). I repeat this point because I think this was the single greatest flaw in all of the update's long list of problems. Yes, consistency can include some "competitive" elements like Wild Charge on Krilowatt, but the key to this is the word consistency, following GameFreak's typing and flavor standards. As an update community, we sure as hell were not consistent with these additions.
  • Updates put the CAP metagame 6 months behind schedule, preventing us from writing gen7 resources such as analyses. There were a million potential ways to have made these go faster or for us to explore them sooner, such as by implementing the major updates on the server early (before non cosequential updates were finished) so that the changes could be observed and analyses could have been written sooner. But the lack of update principles being held up made it so that potentially relevant updates kept happening throughout the entire, slow process.
The scope of updates went far beyond what people originally agreed to in the pre-update PRC thread. A large part of this is the conclusion added new restrictions that were potentially helpful but that people in the thread never actually agreed to. The update process was crafted largely by a single user and took away the community consensus in which people in the thread largely desired consistency updates. The update major/minor/consistency poll was the final straw that led to the collapse of what the actual people agreed to in the CAP pre-update PRC thread. The major/minor/consistency poll gave contributors the permission to artificially inflate viability of CAPmons despite the PRC thread participants explicitly arguing against this notion.

CAP updates have been a failure because of a lack of forethought (and rushing through the planning process and idling in the update process) but probably more aptly because of a lack of consideration to previously stated ideals. As a result, we ended up with a PRC community that was very much conservative in updates but an update community that had a license to continuously push the limits and be overly liberal with additions and changes.

Since they're almost done now, I hope we can have fun with them and move on, but we absolutely should not go and do this again the same way, if at all.
 

reachzero

the pastor of disaster
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I completely agree with HeaL's assessment of our leadership and timing problems. Every single UL handled their updates differently, and I found that there was extremely little GL input. I'm pretty pleased with the outcome of the updates for the most part; I think every CAP is clearly usable now, and the gap between the best and the worst has closed somewhat. I don't think any of the updates really warped a CAP's identity or role, though there were definitely some competitive close calls. The only update I think really overdid it and which I expect to become problematic is Naviathan. Naviathan got buffed to the moon, and I wouldn't be surprised if we end up regretting that. I really don't think any of the other updates had a bad outcome, though, and some of them, like Spikes/Circle Throw Arghonaut, are almost certain to make the metagame much better (true viable Volkraken counter!).

I do think the process was insanely messy and distressingly time-consuming, so I am fully in agreement with HeaL that the update process was a harrowing experience, and the whole thing almost shipwrecked numerous times. Unlike HeaL, I like the actual outcomes, with the sole exception of Naviathan.
 

HeaLnDeaL

Let's Keep Fighting
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Well, my above post never actually criticizes the specific outcomes for the CAPmons (so I don't know why reach is insinuating I dislike all the outcomes). Like reach, I think a few are very dumb, but most are acceptable in terms of competitive play (though I still think many of them focused to much on artificially inflating viability, which we shouldn't have been doing in he first place and attempting to do so resulted in some of the greatest bogging down of the update process).
 

jas61292

used substitute
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While do not generally feel as negatively HeaL, I do think there were a lot of issues with the updates. My absolute biggest concern is how far the updates strayed from the initial PR discussion. Regardless of anything else, I can say with complete confidence that if we showed the actual updates we made as examples of what could happen with these updates, the PRC would never have approved the process in the first place. Large sections of the PR community were staunchly against competitive updates, and we only even had enough support to consider updates because of the people who supported flavor (consistency) updates alone. Then end of that PR took a sharp turn and while in retrospect I do not think our process was necessarily the best, I do think it could still have worked as the PRC initially intended, had we not done that "priority" discussion and vote. That was definitely the point where the idea of consistency updates with small competitive changes where absolutely needed was someone, outside of PRC, warped into significant competitive updates all around. This is not what should ever have happened, and while I am not too upset with the results, I do not like the fact that the process was basically dragged in a direction I believe it never should have gone.

With that said, once we had those priority votes, I personally, decided to just let things take their course, rather than try and make a big deal of it. I personally disagree with the notion that allowing the ULs to basically have their own approach was a bad thing. Each update had differences, and allowing the ULs to make decisions on how things should go was, in my opinion, a very good thing. Maybe it would have been better had we had a more set process, but in order to do so, this would have needed to spend days, if not weeks more in PR to actually hash out a process, and I personally do not think that would have been worth it.

I do have some other concerns, but really they are mostly minor and nitpicky. I don't really share HeaL's concerns with the UL applications or the timetable/CAP metagame development, and while I can understand where those concerns come from, I think that really, the overall concept of the updates being hijacked away from what the PRC originally intended is the thing that needs to be addressed more than anything else.
 

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