Policy Review Policy Review: The Future of the CAP Metagame

[Deck Knight]

The point still stands that using the triumvirate structure I proposed gives us an immediately playable product that can be implemented right now simply by removing the 4th Gen CAPs from the CAP Metagame.

It also gives us a playable product in Pokemon Online since the 4th Gen CAPs are built for 4th Gen.

These issues are arising because we're having difficulty squaring our wish to have an All-CAP metagame with our policy on not revising CAPs, which was arrived to after years of discussions and attempts.

My proposal is basically to break out our metagames into defined, playable products all their own in the short term and address the hardest part as a completely separate project. This allows us to kick off a CAP metagame immediately rather than continuous inaction over how to continue dealing with CAPs.

It also gives us a rather simple structure for Pokedex numbers, at least for the Gen 4 and Gen 5 metagames: They can simply be appended to the end of their respective generation dexes.

The sticky wicket is then isolated to a CAP DW metagame, a metagame which is clearly in the fan interest but vexing to implement as a balanced game. Reason being that non-updated CAPs can be argued to be missing tools they would otherwise have, with the further liability of being built sometimes as far back as before Platinum.

In general I would like to see us move forward with this proposal, since it gives us a tangible result for this thread than can be implemented swiftly, gives us another product we can implement shortly, and leaves the most vexing work for a later date.

Remember, we make CAPs for each generation's OU. We made 4th Gen CAPs for whatever phase 4th Gen OU was in at the time. We make 5th Gen CAPs for the iteration of 5th Gen OU if effect at their creation.

CAP DW would be remaking all these Pokemon for the most current iteration of 5th Gen OU, which is a daunting task. So daunting in fact that trying to address it head-on is leading to a delay of building a userbase for the CAP metagame.

 

[Rising_Dusk]

Removing the DPP CAPs from the CAP metagame right now really achieves nothing as far as the metagame goes except preventing our players from using 11 of our 13 Pokemon on PS!. That is senseless at the moment and provides us no improvement over the current metagame because Tomohawk still runs over everything with ease. Once DPP is actually implemented in PS! this will be a much more logical course of action (Having DPP CAP and BW CAP) and something we can discuss seriously. Right now we shouldn't even be thinking about it.

DW CAP is a ridiculous notion that is essentially saying that we should have multiple versions of our CAPs. This requires more analysis development we can't support as a project, more metagame support we can't spare time for as a project, and is even further removed from competitive relevance by not only using our fakemons, but using fake revisions for those very fakemons. Cape is right, my analogy is no slippery slope, it is a reality. We need to keep the CAP mission statement at the forefront of what we take on as projects, so let me quote a very relevant part of it for this discussion:

The CAP project has many avid Pokémon fans amongst its contributors, but it isn't a fan project.

We are not here to create a fan-driven DW CAP metagame in any rights, and by its very definition creating such a metagame goes against something very core to what CAP is about. I cannot believe that someone so immersed in the CAP project as you, Deck, would suggest something so entirely contrary to the project's core principles. I cannot and will not support creating some fantasy metagame for our CAPs to have cool and totally random gadgetry at their disposal to use against one-another. That is unacceptable.

 

[Deck Knight]

You forget Dusk that as of right now we can't even agree over the paramaters of a metagame period.

You present a false choice and act indignant as if any course other than the one you would personally choose is unacceptable.

Maybe the best question is, do we want a metagame in the first place?

Since the answer seems to be yes, the second question should be:

What are the parameters of our metagame?

Gen 4 CAPs are the only Pokemon that lack 5th Gen moves of any sort. This is because they were invented to test Gen 4 OU. If you do not want to update them, then they will remain incomplete because of an anti-revisionist absolutism that ignoring an entire generation of updates is still "playing Pokemon" when it clearly isn't. You may be fine and dandy playing such a warped distortion of Pokemon as a fun aside, but I have a serious question for you:

Do you believe the CAP metagame is a serious project in its own right, or is it only an extension of the CAP project proper?

Which is to say, is the entire idea of trying to analyze and manage the CAP tier merely a pro-forma exercise in updating whatever changes occur when we release a new CAP into an unadjusted, unfiltered, untouched ruleset.

Note that this is neither an invalid viewpoint nor an undesirable one. It is, however, the least effective one for conducting analysis, because people new to the metagame will always wonder why the Gen 4 CAPs possess no Gen 5 moves or abilities.

I note we don't even have a Necturna Playtest Analysis yet. Traditionally you've been responsible for that as a high ranking leaderboard player, though it still needs to be done. It's clear we already have a level of dysfunction in simply completing tasks that *are* part of the project, never mind the weeds we've been wading into here. Griping about support we don't have rings pretty hollow when we're not even keeping up with the basics.

It would be much easier for our playerbase to adapt to a 5th Gen metagame with only 2 (soon to be 3) new CAPs than it would be to adapt to a 5th Gen metagame that contains 11 CAPs with no 5th Gen Moves or Abilities, even one's they should logically get as a function of playing 5th Gen Pokemon. Since it is clear we are not going to invest time in official revisions, it seems absurd to me to toss players who barely understand CAP at all into a metagame based around pro-forma marching onward.

Incidentally, our 5th Gen CAPs also have completed Prevos where our 4th Gen CAPs do not. Splitting them out lets us focus on that project without worrying about what we give them for 5th Gen moves, since people won't want to be constrained to 4th Gen for the project. In general those are nagging issues we've never addressed exactly because of tricky category issues like this.

Oh well, at least we're discussing this instead of making CAPs for the CAP metagame, lol.

 

[Rising_Dusk]

I've said it before in this thread and I will say it again: I do not oppose the splitting of DPP CAP from BW CAP, but until PS gets DPP support there is little to be gained from it besides banishing 11 of our CAPs from ever being used. If we don't mind banishing those CAPs to never being used at all, then we can jump the gun and do it now. That's, ultimately, up to the PRC, though I suspect they will favor keeping our 11 DPP CAPs usable for the time being.

Do you believe the CAP metagame is a serious project in its own right, or is it only an extension of the CAP project proper?

It cannot be a serious project for any number of the reasons I listed. The CAP metagame is a consequence of the CAP project, and thus is not something we should spend too much time worrying about. We used to humor revisions because we were a small community and essentially tailored CAPs to what five to ten people wanted. That is unacceptable in today's era, though, and we should learn from our mistakes and not tailor the metagame to what a few prominent users want (or even what the community at large wants). We need to step back, see the forest for the trees, and let the CAPs be for all of the reasons I've spent pages delineating for the PRC.

The CAP metagame, as it stands, currently has no adverse impact on the CAP project because it is essentially unsupported. We let people talk about it if they want, we don't shove it down anyone's throat, and it's fun despite being imbalanced and those who play it essentially deal with it because that's how it is. If we try to change this so that we support the CAP metagame in such a way that it forces us to cast aside the mission statement's core principles, then we are seriously doing something wrong. This is Create-A-Pokemon, not Create-A-Metagame. If we wanted to create a metagame, we'd actually create a metagame and that would be that. We wouldn't be doing the Create-A-Pokemon project to achieve that, and everyone needs to step back and realize that.

 

[Birkal]

This topic has strayed way too much from its original goals. I'm locking this thread because we're just spinning our wheels here, really. We've discussed what this topic intended to discover, so nothing else needs to be said on the issues. Here are the results of this thread:

• CAP will not be getting a subforum in DST for the time being. If it's something we'd like to consider for the future, a new PRC topic may be opened up to discuss this issue.
• CAP will (as it always has) allow RMTs, Smog Articles, and other resources pertaining to the CAP metagame to exist. Specifically, the main CAP forum now can also be used for metagame discussion. Unless the CAP PRC chooses to make changes, the CAP metagame will remain as it is currently (no revisions, allows 4th and 5th Gen CAPs in OU, allows CAP metagame discussion and article writing).
• Users care about the CAP metagame. This is literally all this statement means; don't read into it too much. People have thoughts on the CAP metagame and would like to discuss them is all I am saying here. As a result, the PRC will be hosting a variety of new topics to discuss specific aspects of the CAP metagame. This does not mean that we will be making changes of any degree. It only means that the CAP metagame is important enough to be discussed as a PRC.
• Since revisions are the most thorny issue in play here, discussion of them has been relocated to a new topic. The original post is actually capefeather's last post in this thread. However, I thought it was quite open-minded for a post and consider it to be a good lead in for our discussion on the CAP metagame, so I removed it from this discussion and gave it its own topic. Thanks cape!

Those are the results of this discussion. Feel free to quote any posts that you made in this topic about revisions and post them in the new one. Thanks for chatting PRC; let's keep up the dedicated conversation.