Proposal: Gen 8 Level-up movepool QC

[MrDollSteak]

Hello everyone,

After first talking about this with Quanyails on Discord, I thought it might be worth making a PRC post about a minor issue that has been raised by Gen 8 Movepool precedents.

As Dogfish44 first pointed out during the Movepool stage, Sword and Shield have fundamentally changed how Level-up movepools are determined, with fully evolved Pokemon having access to every single move that their Pre-evolution has learned in their final sets. This could clearly be seen in the way that movepools for Pokemon that evolve by stone are handled, all being at level 1.

This presents a unique problem for CAP in Gen 8, that is beginning to be witnessed with Astrolotl's prevo, wherein, based upon Astrolotl's level-up movepool, there were very little options for its prevolution to have a typing other than Fire / Dragon as no new moves can be added, or moves from other avenues such as TMs and TRs can be substituted in. While this isn't the largest problem for Astrolotl per se, there are implications that future Gen 8 Prevos are further limited by the movepools of their evolutions.

As such, what I ultimately want to suggest, is that, the final movepool for a CAP is able to be tweaked slightly after the pre-evolution process, so that the decision to give it an additional type or slightly different level-up moves can be factored in to the finished CAP's level-up movepool. This also has the benefit of allowing us to make edits to Pokemon that evolve by Stone evolution.

I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts! At the end of the day therse are all flavour decisions more than anything else, but something that I thought might be worth bringing up due to the possible limitations it puts on the Prevo stages!

 

[Dogfish44]

A summary of various thoughts, as this thread has given me a few. Warning for: Stream of Consciousness.

The Need For Technical QC in Sprites and Movepools
In CAP we have several elements - usually we split them into Competitive and Flavour, but I'd argue that 'Flavour' aspects - at least those which are submitted by individual users - are split in two. We have those which are freeform (Names, Dex Entries, Art), and those substantially more rigid which require a lot of understanding of precedents - Sprites, Models, and Movepool. Whilst the former still has rules, and the latter still provides for creativity, there's a very distinct gap.

I'm focussing specifically on Sprites and Movepool here as models are collaborative regardless. Let's start with sprites, as I think the visual aspects are easier. Below are 3 Sprites for a Marill!

Now, if like me your experience with sprites isn't massive, you might take a while to notice any differences. Frankly, these are all sprites of Marill! Given 60 Seconds, could you pinpoint which of these is the true sprite from Pokemon Black/White?

Answer

The leftmost one is the only 'actual' sprite. The central one has a ton of anti-aliasing used for the highlighting, whilst the rightmost one has a completely black outline, rather than a shaded one.

Even if you were able to spot that - a lot of people wouldn't. And that includes people who have gone into the nitty gritty of doing sprite fusions or recolours !!. Put simply, CAP Voters Cannot Be Expected To Understand All Technical Aspects of a flavour stage. This is: Okay! Whilst most of us can tell an outright bad sprite, we can't expect voters to analyse years of precedents. I believe a collaborative step, where the aim is to make ideally zero changes, would be of immense benefit.

Movepools, Evolution Method, and the Pre-Evolution Process
So, at the moment we have a movepool problem, with regards to pre-evolutions. Movepool design pretty heavily implies the method of evolution - I'd say that evolution method is determined currently within movepool. Now, historically, that's been fine as nobody has considered a stone evolution specifically. However, with how different a Stone Evolution looks when compared to, well, anything else, it becomes a sticking point.

Personally, I think this ties into a larger need when we discuss the pre-evolution to determine at that point (via community consensus) what evolutionary method to use at all stages. This would also be sensible as a time to actually discuss how many pre-evolutions we want, rather than immediately jumping into the vote there.

In doing this, we once again make movepools able to be constructed from a technical and flavour perspective, rather than from speculation as to how to complete the technical aspects.

How Far To Go?
We run into a problem on typing. Whilst in Generation 8 very few Pokémon gain types... gaining a type has a notable impact on movepool design! Look at Corviknight or Drednaw, and look at where their Steel- and Rock-Typed coverage is respectively - either Evolution, Heart Scale, or as a 'capstone' move.

Whilst many things can be QC'd in movepools - LU Patterns that are erroneous, mis-understandings of Heart Scale moves - I think the scale of changes needed to adapt may present a problem for people. And, more to the point, I imagine many people would be irate that their movepool was being substantially changed in structure (not even 'we're adjusting these level numbers to match precedents') to allow for a different flavour option to prevail.

TL;DR Of Thoughts:

• QC Stage for Sprites and Movepools through community consensus on technical concerns would be a good idea.
• Larger discussion of Pre-Evolutions before movepool subs open, including a decision on Evolution Methods, would be an EXCELLENT idea.
• What do we do about the other pre-evolution restrictions on Movepool design, such as potentially gained typings - can we factor that in effectively?