Other Should CAP be Tiered Independently from OU

Deck Knight

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Should we tier the CAP Metagame Independently from OU?

One of the problems that has plagued CAP for nearly every project is that in the time it takes to complete, the OU tier completes a suspect test and one of the Pokemon we make assumptions on early in the CAP is removed. For example, the argument for Ghost/Dragon involved the inability of Dugtrio to trap it. By the time Pajantom was complete, Arena Trap was banned in OU. The same has been true of bans like Mega Metagross, which could be handled somewhat ably by Pyroak and Cyclohm despite being an unbalanced terror in OU.

Nonetheless, this is not a discussion that should be taken lightly. Each CAP is built for a balanced metagame of some kind, and if we decide our own parameters for balance, we need to do so with good reason. We try to modify CAPs minimally while ensuring they are not too unbalanced for our own tier.

Should we do this, I believe we ought to have a different sort of mentality on tier governance because CAP’s main thrust is we can balance a metagame via addition rather than subtraction. We can’t, however, mandate a “balance concept” for the next CAP. Another option is to do a personal consideration for each OU Suspect to see if that suspect also unbalances the CAP metagame.

This would be a very serious and significant branching out for CAP. Please bear that in mind as you discuss.

Please note that whatever the outcome of this thread, CAP 24 will exist with our current ruleset (including any OU supsect test results) in effect.
IF we decide to do anything, the implementation process will take place independently of any ongoing or upcoming CAP Project.
 
Yes, I believe it would make the most sense for CAP to be tiered separately. While the OU and CAP meta tend to be similar, the changes between the two are significant enough to heavily alter the viability of certain Pokemon. For example, Tyranitar is much more ineffective in CAP than in OU as new threats like Tomohawk and Arghonaut can reliably counter it, while some others like Tapu Lele become much more dangerous, as its STAB moves can hit a ton of CAP mons Super-effectively. Naturally this means that a Pokemon that might be seen as broken in OU could be not nearly as threatening in CAP. Mega-Metagross is probably the biggest example, not only it's checked by new additions like Pyroak and Cyclohm, but it also one of the few physical attackers that are able to break through Tomohawk, a S-ranked CAP, which some may argue that makes it a healthy addition to the tier. While I know that some would disagree with M-Meta was busted, the fact that a mon is broken in OU does not equate to the same mon being broken in CAP remains. Even if after we make this change we decide to unban nothing, this still is an important decision we need to make now, as something may eventually come that requires us to handle its ban differently than OU, and the breach between the two metas will only become bigger as more CAPs are created.
 

G-Luke

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Finally! I have been waiting on this discussion since I started to play CAP. The way I see it, the OU tiering only ties down the CAP metagame. Way back in Gen IV when it was OU + 4 or 6 new mons it was completely understandable for the meta to be wrapped around OU. But this simply is not the case anymore. We have 23 unique custom Pokémon that all are designed to fill certain niches, therefore making the very tier itself develop very differently from standard OU. As far as I see it, the OU tiering philosophy only stagnates the CAP metagame and does not allow for development of the metagame. An example of metagames that did not gain major development until they released the shackles of the OU tiering list was Monotype. Back in the day it was called OU Monotype, as it was simply OU's banlist + the Normal Clause. As the tier began to mature however, it was clear that the meta had to start deviating from the banlist, as it banned Talonflame and unbanned Deoxys Speed and Defence. It was eventually decided to rid of the banlist entirely, and the rest is history. Right now, the CAP metagame is truly just a shadow of a tier that gives ZERO shits (pardon my French) about it.

Also for consistency reasons it makes sense, as if we decided to stop making CAPs around the OU meta, it would make sense for the CAP meragame itself to distance itself from OU as well. CAP has grown too much and now its time for it to stand out on its own
 

jas61292

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This is an issue I have flip-flopped a lot on over the years, but with us now fully dedicated to making CAP Pokemon for the CAP metagame, I feel like I can more firmly take a stance. Really, if we have no permanent project ties to OU, the only good reason for our metagame to have any relation to OU is for familiarity and ease of access. At the same time, however, CAP, and therefore the CAP metagame, is about impacting the metagame by adding new Pokemon. I think Deck said it perfectly with the statement that "CAP’s main thrust is we can balance a metagame via addition rather than subtraction."

So what I would propose is that we take that idea to heart and separate from OU, but with a set in stone policy of addition, not subtraction. That is to say, I believe that we should have our own tiering system, but that this tiering system should be rooted firmly in being OU++. That is to say, the CAP banlist doesn't have to be the same as OUs, but CAP should not be banning anything that is not banned in OU. Now things are always going to be tricky if we decide to separate in the middle of a generation, but thinking about things from the perspective of a new generation, what this would basically mean is that we would start out as OU + CAP mons, and then any time that OU decided to ban something, we would decided for ourselves, through whatever method we choose (ie council), whether or not we want to take on that ban. But we would not spend any time at all doing independent suspect tests.

I think this is the method that would give us the best balance between freedom to do our own thing, and sticking with the traditional CAP process of change through addition.
 

Quanyails

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I agree with jas that familiarity is what draws people from OU to CAP. The more we detach the CAP metagame from OU, the more effort it takes for people to learn, play, and confidently discuss the metagame. Maybe the people who are interested in a project like CAP won't mind. Maybe it'll cause a slowdown in community growth.

I know that some other metagames use differing banlists from OU (i.e., Monotype). I've traditionally considered the CAP metagame as OU + CAPmons, which suggests the OU banlist, but I can also see a custom banlist working if we now consider CAP more of an OU-based Other Metagame.

In any regard, should we pursue a custom banlist, it should be firmly grounded in OU. CAP is based in OU, and keeping it familiar helps a lot with attracting new contributors and players. I don't want to see us power-creeping and creating stronger and stronger CAPmons! In terms of an implementation, though, I defer to jas and other people more experienced with the CAP metagame.
 

Deck Knight

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It's no secret that OU, especially in later gens, has a very extensive list of bans from Mega Stones to regular mons. Much of the reasoning for these bans will transfer, but some of it will not. I think if we take a measured approach to each ban we can maintain the ability to relate.

That said, CAP is already quite different, especially in regard to how well it can punish/neutralize set up sweepers.

I agree with the sentiment we shouldn't set up our own suspect tests. We should however have a mechanism in place to accept, reject, or test a suspect test that ends up with a ban in OU.

Not to put reachzero the spot, but I would be specifically interested in his guidance on councils, how to qualify people, etc. to ensure we go into any endeavor like this with the right mindset and ensure there is community trust in any such body we might organize.
 

reachzero

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The CAP metagame is a different animal than the OU metagame, and there are very plainly Pokemon that play much stronger or weaker than they do in OU. Lati@s, for instance, are noticeably worse because they can't take on Colossoil as well as they can Tyranitar, while Dugtrio was far more powerful in CAP even than in OU (Scarf Dugtrio invalidated an incredible number of powerful things with almost no opportunity cost). If all of our concerns were strictly competitive concerns, I would recommend tiering separately without hesitation.

However, tiering separately entails a host of process issues, at each stage of what CAP does.

Constant metagame shifts is, in my opinion, the worst issue and the hardest to fix. The very mission of CAP is to continue adding new Pokemon at a consistent, constant rate. That is a tiering nightmare. You'll see what I mean right away if you play any lower tier: every time a new Pokemon drops, everything has to be re-evaluated. First the new Pokemon has to be checked, unusual interactions have to be looked for, and Pokemon that have already been banned need to be re-assessed if there are notable interactions. This would absolutely slow down the process of creating CAPs, and it would have the potential to recur partially with every new CAP.

What if a CAP is judged to be broken? CAP has a history of pushing (or, more positively, exploring) the limits of what is balanced. We like to experiment with new things, and we don't always know exactly how things will turn out beforehand. Would we be okay as a project with banning, say, Crucibellite? The community is attached emotionally to CAPs in a way that no one is attached to Mega Blaziken. This is even more drastic if the CAP that is broken is the most recently created one.

The initial time cost of establishing distinct tiering would be insane. Imagine that we dropped Blaziken, Aegislash, Deoxys-D and Landorus-I for testing. How long would it take us to decide if they were okay in CAP or not? Testing in isolation would be even more time intensive. Metagame time sensitivity is magnified greatly in CAP because every lost week is another CAP process delayed.

Suspect procedure would have to be worked out, which is at least a manageable problem. Community voting would be best in terms of driving metagame activity, but the time cost of getting ladder requirements is damaging to our process, as previously noted. A particularly contentious Suspect, like DP(P) Garchomp or ORAS/SM Aegislash could cost us both a lot of time and a strong ripple effect (because Aegislash directly influences Crucibelle and Tomohawk viability so much, for instance). Considering how democratic the CAP process is, a powerful Council would be a pretty tough sell.

All this being said, if we do pursue the route of independent tiering, I think the biggest principle that will have to be discussed and decided on is whether competitive balance should be the only factor we would be considering.

tl;dr "Tiering takes a crazy long time and would delay our process a ton. "

Edit: jas' proposal wasn't there yet when I began writing this post. Choosing to accept or reject each individual OU ban would save time as a compromise solution, but it still raises the question of what to do with past bans and worst of all, it still wouldn't solve the problem of Dugtrio (what if a Suspected Pokemon is way stronger in CAP than in OU?), and is much harder to justify philosophically. CAP is basically a full pseudo-Generation ahead of OU in terms of having additional competitively viable Pokemon. Each new generation creates power creep that makes some previously banned Pokemon acceptable (Mew is an unusually strong example, it was busted to the moon in DPP), while making others unexpectedly stronger (Mega Metagross in ORAS was not as good as in SM, with few meaningfulness competitive changes). If we're going in with this, in my opinion we should go all in and give up on trying to stay close to OU.
 
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Drapionswing

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The idea of making CAP independent in regards to tiering policy may sound interesting, but I just don't think it will work. With our playerbase being so small a suspect test of any sort will result in foreign players badge hunting in our tier and moreorless deciding what goes where. We have plenty of contributors who will type away for our process, but not even half of those contributors are metagame "enthusiasts" or even interested in our metagame. That leaves a small amount of active players, in which we then have to potentially battle against or with voters to get a healthy and positive vote across. Unlike our process this cannot be filtered out as anyone who is capable of getting reqs instantly gets voting requirements and can do whatever they want. This leads me to my next point, we don't even have an active ladder so a suspect ladder will either be A.) inactive and hard to get reqs for(lowering reqs isn't even an option for obvious reasons) or B.) More active than we'd want and best case scenario C.) even amount of contribution.

We just don't have enough resources in our community to make this happen, and anyone who says or thinks we do is living in a fairy tale.

Now in regards to future Cap Projects, referring to the Dugtrio problem, if we are aware of a pokemon being suspected then we should be ready to face the consequence that preparations for an individual pokemon may be futile due to a potential ban. The Arena Trap ban was pretty obvious too, and word of the suspect had spread before the thread had been posted.

I agree with reachzero & Quanyails points so far and I think all points to support separate tiering other than jas61292 were weak. My problem with adding to the tier is that we can do that with the caps we already plan to make and I think that is sufficient enough rather than looking toward unbanning other pokemon which may or may not be broken in CAP. I personally don't see the reasoning behind pokemon potentially being not broken for us to go for a separate tiering policy, the tier is fine without them and the 23 CAPs already add a new view of pokemon so really more pokemon is a bit redundant to ask for when we can just make more lol.
 

Bughouse

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badge hunting in CAP suspect tests is not a concern because CAP is not and never will be an official metagame
 

Bughouse

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No. Tiering votes in non-official metagames like balanced hackmons or whatever have never counted towards TC.

Still don't really support tiering CAP separately from OU, but "invaded" suspect tests are not a concern.
 

Birkal

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I definitely think we should tier separately than OU, especially since it resolves one of the worst things about making CAPs for OU: mid-project tier changes. That along is enough temptation to tier on our own.

reachzero brings up a lot of valid concerns, but I think many could be mitigated with how we go about this. For example, we can start the split now instead of going back and unbanning Pokemon right now. We should make CAP24, put it in the metagame, and then decide if we want to bring down a single thread from Ubers. Similarly, I think we'd have to make an outright rule that CAP Pokemon always have to be unbanned. It will probably create a significant of power creep, but I think that's the nature of making 24 new Pokemon for a metagame.
 
I definitely think we should tier separately than OU, especially since it resolves one of the worst things about making CAPs for OU: mid-project tier changes. That along is enough temptation to tier on our own.

reachzero brings up a lot of valid concerns, but I think many could be mitigated with how we go about this. For example, we can start the split now instead of going back and unbanning Pokemon right now. We should make CAP24, put it in the metagame, and then decide if we want to bring down a single thread from Ubers. Similarly, I think we'd have to make an outright rule that CAP Pokemon always have to be unbanned. It will probably create a significant of power creep, but I think that's the nature of making 24 new Pokemon for a metagame.
While I mostly agree with Birkal's points, I think that, under certain specific circumstances, we should, at least temporarily, ban CAP Pokémon. The most obvious situation were I believe this would be a desirable outcome is of course, right after the creation of a new project, if our new addition turned out to be utterly broken, or if after a generational shift one of our past projects gained a new and unexpected buff that was obviously unbalanced. Of course, this should only be used as a last resource, to preserve a balanced metagame, and in a future revision, the broken CAP should be fixed and, hopefully, then be successfully reintroduced into the tier. This method would be much preferable to the alternative of just letting an clearly broken element in the meta unchecked for months, or maybe even years. The idea of allowing even the most overpowered of CAPs made sense when the CAP metagame was seen as merely a dumping ground for past creations, but if we want to focus on developing the tier, having an arbitrary policy of not banning any CAP will only prove to be detrimental for us in the long run. Again, this would not mean that CAPs could be permanently banned, reintroducing them into the tier should be our priority in future update processes.
 

SHSP

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I’m not sold on seperate tiering, but if we decide to, I’m in favor of a council for tiering CAP seperately. Suspecting procedure seems terribly difficult with our current playerbase and delays the process greatly as Reach said, but I feel like a council clears up several issues with the whole seperate tiering idea. Having a seperate council can remove the issue of drastically increasing time in the process, as the council would ideally be seperate and in a constant state of discussion, not making decisions and the like conncurently with CAP processes but being prepared to take action in the downtime between them. A council would be able to still take in community feedback and apply it to a high level of play, and be able to test within itself for stuff like dropping threats from Ubers or banning anything. It’s much more flexible than suspects, and I feel is a better fit for an ever-changing metagame. The point about it being a bad fit for such a community driven process makes me think of an elected council as a possibility: we’d have to work out specifics, but having the community select the people in charge of tiering instead of a selected or invited council would fit us similarly to the TLT in my eyes, especially if we focus on community interaction and focus within the council system.

I also agree with mx on the subject of possibly banning CAPs. We have updates now to tone down power levels of broken mons, as done with Tomo and Auru at these initial updates, and a consistent schedule based around game releases. The ban isn’t permanent, and the CAP will be toned down eventually, even were it to be released at a terrible time (directly after a midgen release I’d imagine). CAPs shouldn’t be exempt from metagame balancing, especially with updates: illusion Auru for example was highly thought of as bannable and unhealthy, but it remained in its state of being a permanent S rank, meta damaging threat because it was a CAP and because we did not move to take action on it.
 
Not much to say on this one either, but I do agree with tiering CAP separately from OU. However, when do you guys think it will take effect: during or after CAP 24?
 
I don't have much time to form this out fully right now, and probably won't come back to expand because of in real life stuff, but I personally do not like the idea of having a separate tiering system. reach already made a bunch of excellent points that I personally think do I quite good job of summing up many of the value issues with tiering (Do we trade off process efficiency for a more in-depth tier system? Do we trade off part of CAP's democratic nature for a strong council? etc.). However, I additionally have one other concern. After that, I'll address my reservations about jas's proposal.

My main consideration is the interaction between suspects (should that work out to be the process route we take for this) and ongoing projects. If a suspect was going on in CAP would it be taken into consideration during the process? Remember, a main argument for separate tiering is that we're establishing an independent identity from OU, which means building for the CAP metagame only. Yet, if the CAP meta is changing during a suspect, is the ongoing CAP technically being built for a past meta that may or may not exist in the following weeks? I understand that the playtest could just happen in the meta prior to the suspect, but then we would be plopping the CAP down into a meta that is different than the one it was designed for, the actual, up-to-date CAP meta. It just seems very counterintuitive to me to even allow the chance for this sort of conflict to come up, as at that point you lose the immediate impact of having tailored a CAP to fit its role in a meta that no longer exists (possibly depending on how the suspect goes). Of course, this could easily be dealt with using jas's solution.

My opposition to that solution is mostly philosophical. CAP has prided itself on having a fairly completed and in-depth system, yet as reach already pointed out you leave a considerable gap in past generations and past current-gen-bans. Given the low play rates of past gen CAP, it's not really a travesty, but in my opinion, it would seem offputting to have such a completionist, detailed project only have a separate tierlist for some of its generational metas. Again, the reasoning here is mostly aesthetic, but it personally puts a bad taste in my mouth to leave it incomplete or to have to go through the exhausting process of looking at all past-gen bans, which would theoretically just be the few players still familiar with those metas, which again brings up the whole democracy thing, but yeah. That was basically all; I hope that made some sort of sense and wasn't just randomness, because I'm so tired writing this that it very well might be. Cheers~
 

BP

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I've had strong opinions on this topic for years and I'm happy that a thread finally appears. I agree with CAP breaking away from OU. This would be extremely beneficial to our meta-game as a whole in my opinion. I want to echo what Birkal said because I absolutely 100% agree with him here. It would definitely solve a decent amount of problems CAP currently faces. Furthermore I think it would honestly be more fun than what I remember CAP being. If you couldn't tell I really have disliked playing CAP and that's why I've stopped. By all means if this makes me sound bias then please take my words with a grain of salt then.

Regarding my first paragraph, while I do agree that CAP should be tiered separately from OU I do have concerns about whether or not we have decent enough numbers for this project. What I'm talking about is TL's, Council, and Suspect Tests. I fear that by doing this CAP may be biting off more then they can chew and that isn't what I want.
 

Deck Knight

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My thought process after reading this is two-fold:

First, other tiers are helped out immensely by the fact Usage as a mechanism is push-pull. Whatever doesn't get used in the highest tier naturally gets brought up in lower ones, until it rises (like that time Quagsire couldn't be used in lower tiers because it hit OU for a month).

In CAP, we're specifically looking at the trickier subject of balance, and for this reason I think we should avoid suspect tests entirely. We don't have the resources or the playerbase to get a satisfactorily in-depth result. What we could do is have a council that discusses the merit of a given banned Pokemon or set of them, what their introduction would achieve, and whether that would be healthy for the metagame.

Process-wise, I think we could attain a balance between stability and meta sensitivity is by making decisions that are in effect for the next 3 CAP Projects at a time. For example, let us say metagame players think Tomohawk is too overcentralizing, and that having Mega Metagross as a physical breaker that can overcome Tomohawk and Deoxys-Defense as a devensive support Pokemon that pressures Tomohawk would be desirable for the metagame. The council votes to drop them down, and we build the next 3 CAP Projects in the meta where both are legal for the duration. We then assess their effect on the metagame after the 3rd CAP and make a determination to extend for another 3 projects.

The same principle could be applied to suspect tests that occur in OU, with a CAP council vote on whether to affirm or deny in effect for 3 projects. If some Pokemon is still obviously broken and centralizing we could have a special process, however most of these are baked into the cake. People have a good operational understanding of how, say, Blaziken, Aegislash, Lando-I, and the various banned Megas work.

I think the easiest thing to implement in short order is a CAP Meta Council that renders a 3-Project duration implementation for each OU Suspect ban. While this doesn't really address Pokemon that are specifically overpowered in CAP, the philosophical answer to that would be if they are really that centralizing, a concept will come along that will directly address them (Target Concepts are exactly this, and part of the Concept OP.)
 

Quanyails

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I don't really like Deck Knight's proposal. We'd be creating CAPmons in an experimental, unstable, and potentially poorly balanced metagame, without a chance to abort for three entire CAP cycles. That's really long and can discourage contributions to CAP if the metagame goes awry. The resultant CAPmons might be similarly poorly balanced.

(Also, I don't like the idea of "unban an OP mon to beat an OP mon", but that's beside the point.)

In general, reachzero has raised excellent points about the "could" vs. the "should" of this topic. I agree that we don't have the resources to rebalance the CAP metagame well, fast, and non-disruptively at the same time.
 
I'm really not into Deck Knight's proposal either. Our metagame has been evolving around the OU metagame for years and has been adapting and working perfectly well, dropping random Uber pokemons is not the way to attract new players, especially if it's centralised for that one pokemon being Tomohawk which most likely will be the case, but it is fair to mention that Tomohawk has been decreasing usage and competitive usefulness which then again makes me wonder.

What CAPmon do you think is too overpowered to drop a "counter" from the Uber tier? Realistically none, but if you ask yourself, What Uber mons could we drop in order to raise a CAP's viability and usefulness competitively? You will find a totally different option. While I am helping your case by raising this question I don't think it should happen either way.

While this may bring about 5 new users to our community it still isn't worth it just because it will be a disaster, pokemons will have to be tested, people will argue wether or not one should drop, not to mention suspect testing will not even work out in our tier due to our rather small community so we're going to have to waste even more time into figuring out a way where people could contribute but then will they stick around? Because I have to say only quite a few players are interest in laddering in CAP, thus not counting staff and moderation team because some of you don't even play the tier, so I'm not sure why you should raise this issue.

CAP counts no overpowered pokemons to our current state, thank to the dedicated users who have taken a huge time to update our CAPmons. Time has been highly wasted and we only have been making one CAP since Sun and Moon and your main concern should be to use our remaining time now on making new caps not dropping Uber mons because you think Tomohawk is broken. Pajantom has been a huge deception in the community's eye, we have gained zero new contributors from this addition, thus making it a priority on your list.

My excuse if I may sound rude but the idea of dropping mons from Ubers is rubbish and it is not what CAP should be focused on. Neither should it be focused on making itself independent. Enlarge your community and then it will be the right time to have a talk about it, but it is too soon for a small community to become independent and work it's way out.
 
I have to disagree with Deck's proposal too, the metagame should be updated after every CAP. This would eliminate any issues with suspect tests starting in the middle of the process, and after the current CAP is finished, a council should decide if we should follow the latest changes in OU. Of course by default, we should try to keep the same banlist, but there could be situations in the future where that might not be the best choice. Also, for those who are worried that we might don't have the manpower to handle a separate tier list, I'm pretty sure that in OMs, it's not uncommon to have custom banlists, so I think than having one for us would be feasible for our community.
 
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