Policy Review An Adjustment in Direction

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Bughouse

Like ships in the night, you're passing me by
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Echoing Stratos that the OU hate is really misplaced. OU has actually been quite stable for about a year now. But even though OU is unstable at the beginning of generations for a while and then on occasion thereafter, there is no better metagame for CAP.

There is only one (6 v 6 singles) meta that is ever more stable than OU. UU and other lower tiers don't even exist at the beginning of generations, so they are plainly not an option to build a CAP around consistently. And even when they do exist, these are tiers fundamentally dependent upon the shifts that OU undergoes. OU tests and removes Aegislash? Threats that saw little face time in OU like Starmie and Celebi suddenly rise. Yes, this fundamentally alters OU, but it, in theory, does so for the better. And this spills over into CAP. For example, we would no longer have needed to consider Aegislash 7x as much as your run of the mill OU Pokemon, like we did in Volkraken's project, had that project taken place a few months later. And I think that project as a whole would have turned out better had Aegislash already been banned when we started. But the same positive effects can't be guaranteed for UU; OU's actions may unbalance UU and below. Maybe UU losing Starmie and Celebi was bad for UU's balance. And this is the nature of Smogon usage tiers, where OU's effects cascade downards, and that's ok because OU is the premier metagame.

So obviously lower tiers are not a consistent option. The All-CAP meta isn't much better, because it's just OU + additional threats, which means when OU changes, All-CAP more often than not changes even more than OU does, just because there are more moving parts. The only option that will ever be more reliable for CAP than OU is Ubers, and we all know why Ubers is a dangerous meta: optics and brokenness.

I described OU as the right meta for CAP to build in because of convenience when we had the live chat a few days ago. Someone else said it was necessity. It's somewhere between the two, but no matter what it definitely has been, is, and will continue to be the best option.
 
The real time opportunity of Saturday's IRC meeting was invaluable to progressing this PRC along. I'm also relatively new to this outfit and as such I'm not quite that familiar with each and everyone of your thoughts and opinions on the various topics discussed thus far. It was invaluable to me as well. That being said, I felt there were a few takeaways that were at the very least a majority consensus among those who participated.

Those takeaways being:

1. The toxicity can be traced back to the mentality that CAP is a 'must succeed/must not fail' project.
2. The only metagames we should be building for are OU or CAP, nothing else makes sense.
3. We didn't come to CAP for competitive reasons and expectations for newcomers are unrealistic (maybe Flash CAPs can help mend these outcomes together?).
4. Nobody likes Doug's proposal except Birkal.

With point #4 being greatly defined and answered by the IRC meeting itself, I'd like to focus on the other three points.

Let's start with point #3; below are excerpts from the IRC in order with minor edits for ease of reading.

[12:42] <Birkal> Recently, we've come to the point that there is a large divide between new users and veterans. Although CAP has a low entry fee (reading the rules / voting), being a meaningful participant has a steep learning curve.
[12:44] <Birkal> So, my initial question is: do you think that our expectations for being a "good CAP user" at the present time are unrealistic? Or do we like those expectations? Do we even need to change?
[12:45] <jas61292> The expectations, in my opinion, are bad, but that is not the real issue to me. Its our expectations about our expectations that are the problem. I don't think anyone has ever met the expectations, but expects everyone new to meet them. If we lowered our perceived expectations down to what they really are, I think it would be helpful.
[12:46] <Stratos> the reason ppl get more frustrated at cap isnt necessarily because theres more retards (tho maybe there are), the problem is that you cant just ignore the retards, because they vote
[12:55] <HeaLnDeaL> random thought: but would a CAP forum tutor system of something similar be at all helpful?
...
[13:06] <BrokenPhobias> I think we should all look why we came to CAP
[13:06] <Stratos> i came to cap because colossoil looked badass on the smogon front page
[13:06] <Reapehify> Kitsunoh for me.
[13:06] <NumberCruncher> Mollux was what got me in
[13:08] <DetroitLolcat> So what we're saying is that a lot of CAP posters didn't come here for competitive reasons.
[13:08] <Birkal> So here's a concern that I have. A new user sees our cool art, or they see our Pokemon on the CAP ladder. They think it's awesome and wants to get involved in the process. I don't think the majority of those users know much about OU, so what are they supposed to do? What should they ideally do to being participating in CAP because they want to join?
[13:11] <jas61292> As mentioned in the thread, general knowledge of mechanics and types of strategies are more important than specifics. Specifics help, definitely, but knowing who fills role X is insignificant compared to knowing what role X is and how it interacts with other roles
[13:11] <Quanyails> It sounds like another place where tutoring might come in handy.
...
[13:25] <bughouse> But at some point the bulk of polite intelligent discussion basically just shifted onto IRC
[13:25] <bughouse> and then summaries got posted on forums
[13:25] <Reapehify> Because there's a certain level of etiquette expected.
[13:26] <Birkal> I think bughouse's point is important: the use of a live chat medium
[13:26] <Reapehify> Not only live chat, but a consensus among all parties on what's expected. There are no noobs on IRC because they're either booted out or ignored.
[13:26] <bughouse> I don't know if this is true for others but no part of CAP for me has been as fun as Flash CAPs
...
[13:34] <Quanyails> Would we say that Flash CAPs are representative of what we look for in a regular CAP?
[13:34] <Animaignis> I personally say yes.
[13:34] <Stratos> no lol
[13:34] <BrokenPhobias> Yes Quanyalis
[13:34] <DetroitLolcat> In less detail, yes.
13:35] <bughouse> Yes a Flash CAP fundamentally meets the same set of requirements as a regular CAP with the sole exemption of how many people are involved
[13:37] <DougJustDoug> I'm a little confused as to why FlashCAPs are being mentioned so much here. Not saying it's wrong to bring them up as a small example of why "fun" is good. But other than that, I don't see FlashCAPs to be terribly meaningful at all, in terms of real policy.
[13:38] <Quanyails> I brought up flash CAPs as a response to Birkal's question about CAP as a creation vs. discussion process.
[13:38] <DetroitLolcat> I'd like to stay on Birkal's and Quanyails' point.
[13:38] <jas61292> Yeah. I mean, I haven't participated in many other than the first one, but when we did that first flash CAP, typing was basically me saying "fire/ice" and Birkal saying yes. That's not discussion on a smaller scale. Maybe others were different, but in my experience, it is not really a scaled down or comparable version.
[13:39] <HeaLnDeaL> I have nearly full logs on the last two flash caps. both were literally about 7 hours long with 70+ pages of discussion
[13:40] <bughouse> yeah Flash CAPs have had plenty of detail; not all, but some do
[13:40] <DetroitLolcat> So jas61292's experience with flash caps seem to be different than phobias, anim's, and bughouse's? I.e., flash caps have evolved since the first one to include much more discussion and less fiat?
[13:41] <Reapehify> I think that's because how the concept was conceptualized by jas and how it was conceptualized by HeaL is vastly different. HeaL modeled it after main CAP. Because of such it acted as a mock CAP helping people who aren't familiar with CAP to better learn it.


Point #3:

You can clearly see two slightly different stories here. The bold is the equivalent 'tl;dr' for those of you who aren't interested at reading (or rereading) the plethora of context there. It starts with the premise: would a CAP forum tutor system of something similar be at all helpful? A point HeaL just threw out there and the 'how' of it got brushed to the side as it didn't really have too much relevance. It's a good point, though; a point I'd like to make a case for here for all of you to consider as opposed to brush off in the chaos of a live chat. Doug had made note that it doesn't seem relevant to policy, but I disagree.

The pitch is simple:

1. We agree expectations (of expectations) are unrealistic of newcomers.
2. We agree new users are drawn in by the brand of CAP (artwork) and not the philosophy of CAP (technical discussion).
3. We agree that a Flash CAP is fun and fundamentally exhibits the steps of a true CAP Project on a smaller scale.
4. We agree that because Flash CAP is essentially a stress free mock CAP, it helps newcomers learn the ropes in a depressurized situation.

When you consider all of those propositions to be true, it is therefore true that using the model of a Flash CAP would help to educate newcomers learn about the philosophy of CAP and the expectations they would have thrust upon them by being a part of this event through giving them working experience to relate to.

For those of you who agree but are skeptical, maybe asking how would this even work? I'll explain how I see it working.

So: every CAP Project nominates a TLT before the concepts are submitted. These people have, by nominating themselves, already agreed to devote a large amount of time to the CAP Project as it is. An extra day can be given to after TLT selection and before concept submissions where an official Flash CAP is held. It'll be run by the TLT with each TL reprising their roles in the Flash CAP. Anyone can join on the day of the Flash CAP, but anyone who hasn't participated in a CAP Project will need to participate in the Flash CAP project in order to post in the real CAP project. This Flash CAP unlike the real thing is broken up into timed portions to help maintain the condensed time frame (5h~). This gives a chance for newcomers to get a taste of the process as well as give the TLT room to help/learn about the newcomers in any given CAP Process. In order to mandate the Flash CAP as the gateway to posting for newcomers, the CAP Process would have to become a privileged area where access is granted. To discern who has been involved before and who hasn't, it would be easy enough to ask someone to simply provide a reference link or screencap to a previous CAP Project from which they would be permanently on the accepted list (as there's no point asking every time a new project starts). Newcomers that aren't able to make it for the Flash CAP tutor program and maybe wanted to start halfway through are still fully capable of looking, learning, and sharing ideas with others. Then come next CAP they would be doubly versed through lurking as well as going through the Flash CAP.

I think this helps newcomers understand the expectations of them much more than they would by just looking at amazing art and wanting to make their own Pokemon; it gives veterans more reason to be composed as well. I'm not foolish enough to say there won't be some who still vent their bitterness at noobs, but by doing something to encourage newcomers you're sending the dual messages that say 'these are our expectations of you, newcomers' and 'we expect you veterans to be more composed and helpful since newcomers aren't complete "retards".' In other words, Birkal's words, it would be increasing the "entry fee" in exchange for lowering the "steep curve" of learning what it means to be a good participant. I see this as a fair compromise for all. I also can't see this really stretching out the CAP Project anymore than it already is since it would only be one day. And at worse we all agree Flash CAPs are fun, right? It would, should be a reminder before every actual CAP process of why we want to take part in such a community activity in the first place.

MB: I've talked to other members of this council (Deck Knight, NumberCruncher) who feel the single entry point would be a hindrance to the process. One of which might be resolved by creating a second entry point around the Art Submission phase of the project where new life is brought in to the CAP.

Point 1&2:

Unlike Point #3, Points #1 and #2 are less fun and more business. These points while agreed upon by most are only done so at face value; what I mean is that the general statements may ring true to most of us, but the cause beneath the general statements in contrast, differs. For me, it comes down to the conclusion that while OU is the default meta CAP has attached itself to, it's not the best or even the most preferable. I know there are naysayers, the very same Doug cited as not being impactful because he already knew their stance - and those naysayers have nay said. Despite this, I'd like to formally revisit the notion that the CAP Project shift from OU to the CAP metagame. To ignore it because some people simply disagree would be the folly of us all: it's an interesting idea, it's a good idea, and it is with no exception any less valid of an idea. The actual proposal is quite simple - we use Birkal's original proposal from page 1. It's elegant, concise, focused, and best of all received no true criticisms.

Essentially, I am proposing that we convert to continually focus on all CAP Pokemon (ie. the metagame created by all of them), not just one CAP Pokemon at a time. There are several strong advantages to this idea that alleviate many of the ailments CAP has been plagued with in recent times. First and foremost, it grants us greater flexibility in the creation process, particularly with concept synthesis, to cope with the hyped-up OU metagame. With balance now listed as one of our objectives, we can build concepts that address specific threats that threaten balance. We can build Pokemon that have unusual abilities or don’t fit the CAP mold thanks to extra forgiveness embedded in the process. With the potential power to edit our creations post-process, we can explore new depths of the metagame through individual case students and their effect on the metagame. It is an excuse that allows us to have more elastic and diverse discussions.

Secondly, it alleviates the continual headache that is our playtest. Previously, all of our playtests struggle to give us accurate information about how the Pokemon performs in OU due to centralization. Everyone and their mother brings multiple counters to the new CAP, which causes awkward statistics. While centralization still exists in my proposal, it is subdued thanks to the continual nature of our new metagame. Our new “playtest” never really stops; it is simply our metagame and tier. After months of battling, we may discover that we did indeed answer our questions as players ladder and battle. It also gives us an excuse to discuss balance on a continual basis, bringing metagame discussion to an elevated position that it hasn’t had in our project since its introduction.

Thirdly, it grounds us resolutely in the metagame. It will be difficult to have a strong voice in the project if you’re not playing our metagame and are unaware of current trends. Players can quote their battle experience in discussions to provide weight to their thoughts. Since our metagame would be constantly available, we would effectively solve the age-old problem that CAP does not have a metagame to attract competitive battlers. A metagame grows competitive battlers by having a metagame. Since we do not have a metagame for battlers to latch onto, of course we don’t have consistent competitive contributors (unlike when CAP originally started in the OU forum). Rising_Dusk’s concern of player disinterest is a thing of the past. Most of our official tournaments require competitive battlers to learn multiple metagame. In my estimation, players are now more excited to learn new metagames than ever before. And if we’re touting the banners of balance and creation, it will be a tempting proposition to join. We will have a set of dedicated battlers that are veterans to our tier.

Fourthly, consider the CAP brand name. Our past projects are popular, largely thanks to the flavor giants who so graciously lend their talents. I jokingly ask the Pokemon Showdown lobby, “what’s a cap?” almost every time I log on. There is always someone with an answer, and most people are eager to say which CAP is their favorite. We build competitively (and flavorly) enticing Pokemon that battlers are naturally drawn to use. Currently, we stuff them all into a spin-off metagame that is cast into the shadows. With this proposal, we would gradually bring these Pokemon back into the limelight to study and battle with on a daily basis. This is what separates my proposal from any sort of fakemon project or other metagame. We have a rock solid history and an excruciatingly exact process that accommodates for thousands of users to contribute.

Of course, there are many (many) kinks that will need to be resolved. How will we choose which CAPs to edit? How will we determine balance? Will there be a council? Will there be unbannings? How can we fit currently banned abilities into the process? Which parts of current CAP will we keep, and which parts will we need to revise? Will it be successful? I have my own answers to each of these questions, but I would like to explore them as a Policy Review Committee in future threads. Please don’t let tiny details formulate your entire basis of thinking in this thread. We are here to discuss general CAP philosophy. The details can be ironed out once we’ve decided on our direction. Think large scope for the moment.


That's point #2 - the 'how' - if you will. Point #1 (The toxicity can be traced back to the mentality that CAP is a 'must succeed/must not fail' project) would then be the 'why' of shifting from CAP to OU. I believe that this obsession with success/not failing originates from the aggressive, viability-oriented mindset of OU. There's a lot of 'why' in Birkal's proposal but that's more why CAP is right and less why OU is wrong. I don't quite have the reputation to tell you why OU is wrong for CAP. Fortunately, I think these people do.
[13:04] <Quanyails> Don't put so much gravitas on the end goal?
[13:05] <DougJustDoug> I agree with that, Quanyails.
[13:25] <DougJustDoug> To rephrase Stratos' point to what I personally believe -- I always thought cap was about discussing the competitive pokemon metagame through the unique lens of trying to build a pokemon that fits in it.
[13:25] <DougJustDoug> At the time "OU" was the only competitive metagame in town. But CAP was not really about "OU", ever.
[13:25] <DougJustDoug> It was about the "unique lens" for DISCUSSION.
[14:28] <DougJustDoug> This point of complexity Reaper mentions is relevant, imo. I think the things that are required to be truly successful in OU, are just too narrow for CAP to hit. Which means the discussions require incredibly specific and detailed advanced knowledge. That's why we have to expand things. You can call that "lowering the bar", but I prefer to think of it as "expanding the field".
[12:58] <jas61292> I know, ideally, if the leaders are doing their job, there is no "wrong" choice. But... tell that to invested participants, and they will likely laugh at you.
[12:58] <Birkal> I think jas' point is poignant. There shouldn't be a wrong choice, but once in a project, people invested in the conversation think that there are wrong choices
[13:02] <jas61292> Yeah, we are a competitive community, and we want to be successful, but in the end, if we are not, oh well. We didn't lose out on anything. We had an experience, and ideally, it was enjoyable.
[13:11] <jas61292> As mentioned in the thread, general knowledge of mechanics and types of strategies are more important than specifics. Specifics help, definitely, but knowing who fills role X is insignificant compared to knowing what role X is and how it interacts with other roles
[13:58] <Birkal> but when did the point of CAP every become to make a "viable" Pokemon? I don't understand how we can have a discussion about what CAP is at its heart, but as soon as we start discussing a change-up, all of those "core factors" of what CAP is disappears, and is instead replaced with these ideals that really are insignificant to what this project i
[13:27] <DetroitLolcat> I would like to point out that through a half hour of discussion nobody has brought up OU as a problem affecting the rift between newcomers and veterans or as a problem with CAP culture.
[13:59] <DetroitLolcat> CAP isn't about making a Pokemon in the context of OU. Or at least it doesn't have to be.
[14:07] <DetroitLolcat> Second place would be the CAP meta. There's no point in looking past those two.
[12:58] <jas61292> I know, ideally, if the leaders are doing their job, there is no "wrong" choice. But... tell that to invested participants, and they will likely laugh at you.
[12:58] <Stratos> of course they do man, i contributed to cap for four years, i get that
[12:58] <bughouse> OU also lets its mods be incredibly aggressive against stupid content
[14:08] <bughouse> If breaking off from OU is desired, the CAP metagame is the only reasonable alternative
[14:20] <Stratos> there is no other metagame where even a small portion of the people who participate in an OU cap would be able to participate, except maybe CAP meta itself
[15:11] <Stratos> ive talked about this with HeaLnDeaL before but basically theres two types of culture on smogon
[15:12] <Stratos> theres the type where being a retard gets u called out, and the type where calling out retards is punished
[15:12] <Stratos> ppl from one culture cant rly stand bein in the other
[15:12] <Stratos> competitive communities are in the first camp, and CAP is in the second


- Doug explains how CAP is not tied to or beholden to OU, and how OU has outgrown its purpose with myopic views that differ from what CAP hopes to achieve ultimately wringing discussion dry.
- Birkal and Jas hit on the mentality of OU veterans who have this perception of wrongness because they're so entrenched in what they want (an OU pokemon) that they create conflict with newcomers. Birkal expands on this point only solidifying the difference between OU values and CAP values.
- Detroit Lolcat, a firm OU supporter, directly brings up the proposition that OU's culture could be the cause of the increased animosity in CAP or with CAP culture. I would agree.
- bughouse and Stratos are the coup de grâce of this all. They singlehandedly explained, regardless of everything else thus far, why OU and CAP are not best for each other. They're not compatible for each other. It's as simple as that.

All these little problems, they aren't democratic problems. These are all tantamount to a tier that wants something entirely different than the CAP process. For us to continue to pander to OU is just as much a death wish if not more so, because we're communicating with a brick wall and bleeding out slow and painfully. So painfully even someone as entrenched in OU as ginganinja thinks we should run with CAP for CAP.
[16:51] <Outkal> would you rather make mons for OU or CAP meta
[16:51] <ginganinja> CAP Meta
[16:51] <ginganinja> cos u couldn't make them for OU
[16:51] <ginganinja> gg
[16:51] <ginganinja> and least u guys know your cap meta reallllly well
[16:52] <ginganinja> but too many members of the community dont know anything about OU
[16:52] <ginganinja> and I'm perfectly qualified to say this, because I modded the concept workshop once upon a time and it got really obvious
[16:52] <Outkal> if CAP continues to make mons for OU
[16:53] <Outkal> I may actually prefer it if we were a subforum of the OU forum
[16:53] <Outkal> what do you think ginga
[16:53] <ginganinja> doubtful
[16:53] <Outkal> doubtful in what way
[16:53] <ginganinja> you wouldn't get activity
[16:53] <ginganinja> as a subforum
[16:54] <Outkal> yah but quality would increase
[16:54] <Outkal> because it'd be the people who regular the OU forum going to it
[16:54] <ginganinja> why?
[16:54] <ginganinja> have you seen suspect threads
[16:54] <Outkal> yes ginga
[16:55] <ginganinja> its like 1% of people knowing what they are talking about being drowned out by 99% of people with no clue
And that ladies and gentleman are the what's, how's and why's of OU not being best for CAP.

With that, I'd like to end with the list of support this proposal has gained and will gain from its inception. I'll tier it into two camps: generally supportive and fully supportive.

Generally Supportive for Flash CAP: Deck Knight, Quanyails, NumberCruncher
Fully Supportive for Flash CAP: Integer Mova

Generally Supportive of CAP for CAP: Deck Knight, NumberCruncher, Quanyails
Fully Supportive of CAP for CAP: Integer Mova

#makeCAPgreatagain
 
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Stratos

Banned deucer.
switching to the CAP meta is honestly probably fine, I've already offered my thoughts on that. I could see how Flash CAPs can be cool (I tried to participate in one once and didn't like it at all but thats just me), and could stand to be promoted more as a means to introduce yourself to the community and made slightly more "officialized" instead of spur of the moment. Sounds like a decent idea. But mandating flash CAP participation before you participate in a real CAP is a terrible idea for a number of reasons such as "time zones," "plenty of people have been good CAP contributors their very first time," "how are you going to take attendance," and most importantly "no just fuck that in general."

This isn't related to your proposal, but your post relies heavily on twisting others' words and using them in contexts they weren't really intended to be used and that's a really infuriating argumentative tactic that will just make people mad, and really made me hate what was honestly otherwise a mediocre-at-worst post. If you want to make an argument, just make it in your own words. If the people you're quoting actually like your idea, they can come post in support of it. Trying to use my words to support a proposal that they weren't explicitly intended to support makes me feel like im being slandered and im sure im not the only one. Also it makes it feel like you're trying use an appeal to authority to push a proposal through instead of letting the idea stand on its own merit.
 

Bughouse

Like ships in the night, you're passing me by
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I glanced through the one part of the post that seemed to reference me and oh my was I surprised by what I saw
- bughouse and Stratos are the coup de grâce of this all. They singlehandedly explained, regardless of everything else thus far, why OU and CAP are not best for each other. They're not compatible for each other. It's as simple as that.
I don't know how the heck you got this out of
even though OU is unstable at the beginning of generations for a while and then on occasion thereafter, there is no better metagame for CAP.
....
I described OU as the right meta for CAP to build in because of convenience when we had the live chat a few days ago. Someone else said it was necessity. It's somewhere between the two, but no matter what it definitely has been, is, and will continue to be the best option.
and
OU is a perfectly fine metagame and it seems more like people are using it as a scapegoat than anything.
I'm not even gonna bother reading the rest of your wall of text when you clearly either lack basic reading comprehension or just have no scruples about misrepresenting other people's words :/

To be clear for the like 6th time... OU is the best metagame for CAP to build in.
 

HeaLnDeaL

Let's Keep Fighting
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I pretty much agree with Stratos regarding Flash CAPs. They are cool and all, but mandating participation in them is not something I support for all new users to go through.

I also want to stress something that Reapehify ignored, and that is CAP prevos pretty much have that same pros of a for-fun, low-risk CAP. Prevos have essentially been a mini-CAP process more focused on easy going, flavorful discussion than on competitive qualities. Sure, prevos take longer than a Flash CAP, but both essentially do the same thing of getting people familiar with the process (while having fun, yada yada). Cawdet was the first time I participated in CAP, and I think it was a very valuable experience in getting me ready for a full CAP. But while flash CAPs / prevos can help familiarize the creation process with new users, making them mandatory is not at all in line with CAP's goal of being inclusive, and it puts needless red tape and restricts involvement from other potentionally great users. For example, this last CAP WhiteDMist came in (I think this was his first CAP?) and was thoroughly amazing with his participation. I really, really do not want to block potentially great users such as WhiteDMist from participating simply because it would be their first CAP and they haven't completed their "training" session, as the Flash CAPs essentially become in Reapehify's proposal.

And honestly, I think if we're going to change CAP for the better, we need to figure out how to attract new users and keep them interested throughout most/all of the CAP process. And starting with Stat Limits is when participation just plummets. If certain stages suck the fun out of CAP, let's get rid of them or modify them instead of sitting around and expecting the next CAP to suddenly do those stages better. For further clarification, I think the stages that need the most tweaking are:

1. Concepts - We tried the concept workshop because our concepts were thought to be of poor quality without enough vetting, but this killed hype and quite frankly not a usable amount of concepts were approved by the workshop. Concepts have also recently been criticized for being too ambitious to the point where achieving them is excessively hard. I'm not sure what the current way to reform concepts should be, and Deck Knight has proposed one possible solution. We've struggled with concepts, and this is clear, so let's do something about it.
2. Stat limits - This stage is essentially a vestigial toe left behind from the build triangle that we no longer support. The number of people who participate in this step is pitifully small, and the quality of posts are super super questionable. I don't think anyone these days truly "gets" the stage. And participation for the rest of competitive CAP seems to drop down after this stage, as was especially notable this last CAP.
3. Movesets - Currently I just think this stage is overly regulated. When I TLTed movesets this last CAP it was a nightmare trying to get people to follow the rules, and in the end some areas such as moveset edits were still rarely done "correctly." I think separating flavor from competitive was fantastic, but only certain CAP concepts truly allow for movesets to be easily defined so early (Navi's concept was entirely based on having two different boosting movesets, whereas Crucibelle's concept didn't have this sort of focus at all). I'm not sure what the best solution is, but it's not working.

The CAP process itself is giving us noticeable pitfalls, so why don't we tend to these? Yes, I think some optics issues exist as well, but clearly we haven't been able to get many new users to consistently come back to CAP or to even motivate them enough to complete a single CAP before dropping out. User toxicity might be a reason for this, but I think the process is equally at fault. Focusing on the attitudes of users and ignoring the toxicity of the process won't give us a complete solution.

I don't want to repeat too many things that I've already said on past posts (though I sort of summarized some things), but I haven't posted in a while so I figured I'd share where my head is currently at.

For what it's worth, this "what metagame(s) or lack thereof to build for" conversation is no longer interesting me. I think right now we have problems that are independent from metagames. As a result, I don't support a change right now and would prefer us to stick with OU.
 

snake

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CAP Co-Leader
Here's my opinion.

I joined CAP with literally zero OU experience, and I just love the CAP Metagame to the point where it's my favorite metagame. I just don't like playing OU. I know the CAP Metagame is a dump area for the old CAPs and has no impact on the overall projects and blah blah blah...but I don't really see a reason why we can't use the basic process (I agree with HeaLnDeaL with Concepts, Stats Limits, and Movesets stages being super stagnant) we use now on the CAP Metagame. It might be harder to pull people in if we separate from OU, yes, but it might be able to retain more people. If participants learn the CAP Metagame and get to continue to use the final product in more battles besides the awfully biased playtest, I feel like we can retain our members more. If we were to go in this direction, I would see a large drop in participation, but I feel like once the ball gets rolling, we can attract new members and then be able to retain them better. See, now the project becomes less of "Ok, the playtest is over; hooray we did it. Guess I'm going to wait a few months and forget about CAP entirely...oh we're in the movepool stage now because I stopped checking CAP after 3 weeks since the last project" and more of "Oh look, my mon is in the metagame I play on a regular basis!" It kinda hits home how CAP was created: to use these Pokemon in "real battles."

There was one part of Doug's proposal that I really, really liked. That was the concepts stage idea. Right now, I feel like (even after 21 caps) we've pretty much exhausted the "really cool concepts." Look at the Gen 6 CAPs: Volkraken was a core concept project (much like Voodoom), Plasmanta (while a good concept on paper) ended up being another core concept project, Naviathan's project was all over the place (from what I've read), and then Crucibelle's concept was pretty much Mollux's just a teensy bit different. Right now, the struggle for "really cool" concepts is basically because one stage becomes streamlined. That said, I'm not saying we should make "Ice/Dragon Mon that uses Dragon Dance" a concept. I'm saying things like the Parting Shot concept (my favorite), Toxic Spikes, and Substitute are good because they're realistic. We have a more concrete end goal (but not a fully solid goal) in mind than "Use a boost to get through!" and hope DD and CM work together. Additionally, I know most people don't like Doug's proposal, but the idea of just a concept being Sweeper or Wallbreaker or whatever makes this concept process simpler instead of people reaching out trying to find the couple ideas that haven't been touched, impossible to do, or are against the rules.

TL;DR:
1) Move to CAP to retain people to a better degree
2) Make the concept stage a little less stressful and a little more open, but not to the point where we get "Ice/Dragon Mon that uses Dragon Dance" concepts
 

Imanalt

I'm the coolest girl you'll ever meet
is a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
Not directly in response to any post, but more a general observation about a lot of the recent discussion. Everyone has been talking a lot about new users, and they always categorize them as people who have little to no experience in both smogon and in competitive play in general. There's a whole other group of the rest of smogon which is a very very large userbase that we could also be looking to recruit. If we're giving up on recruiting from the rest of the forums, why are we even still on this site? Rather than accept that all of our new userbase is people who don't play pokemon and aren't on smogon, and tailor to them, maybe we should instead be looking to see why the rest of the site has no interest in us, and what we can do to fix that.

also goddamn can people hold off on saying "this stage needs to be fixed"? no shit a lot of process things need to be fixed, but until we have any sort of agreement on what our goals are from this thread, its stupid to say "fix concepts" (this coming from me, and i think i've bitched about concepts being broken more than anyone else)
 
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HeaLnDeaL

Let's Keep Fighting
is an Artistis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a CAP Contributor Alumnus
also goddamn can people hold off on saying "this stage needs to be fixed"? no shit a lot of process things need to be fixed, but until we have any sort of agreement on what our goals are from this thread, its stupid to say "fix concepts" (this coming from me, and i think i've bitched about concepts being broken more than anyone else)
Quite frankly the attitude that we need to change our meta or our userbase has resulted in practically no progress forward after months of discussion. Let's just move on and fix what we actually can fix. The process has some pretty darn poor stages. These stages are discouraging participation. The process itself is a huge source of CAP buzzkills. Let's fix it. Furthermore, adjusting our process and trying to cater to users can happen simultaneously (as in users themselves can be attracted to CAP through changes to the process).
 
Quite frankly the attitude that we need to change our meta or our userbase has resulted in practically no progress forward after months of discussion. Let's just move on and fix what we actually can fix. The process has some pretty darn poor stages. These stages are discouraging participation. The process itself is a huge source of CAP buzzkills. Let's fix it. Furthermore, adjusting our process and trying to cater to users can happen simultaneously (as in users themselves can be attracted to CAP through changes to the process).
It seems like the attitude that we need to change our meta/user base has resulted in no progress is because the people present are entirely divided on the matter to the point where it results in nothing but circular arguments without a definitive means to decision. Perhaps some authoritative guidance on the matter by Birkal or Doug and/or the democratic process we cherish (i.e. voting) would help the endless amount of time spurting from every side come to some level of fruition and progress. We clearly have passionate views for both OU and CAP so let's just get the issue over with by way of voting on the matter and settling the deadlock. I can't see fixing the process until we know what comes beforehand; I've got to agree with Imanalt on this matter.
 

Birkal

We have the technology.
is a Top Artistis a Top CAP Contributoris a Top Smogon Media Contributoris a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Admin Alumnusis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnus
I'm here to get us back on track to the original intent of this PRC thread. Back when I created this thread in July, my intention was to provide CAP with more autonomy and freedom by recommending we build Pokemon for the CAP metagame (actually, I proposed we create for a new metagame entirely). I don't think anyone could have guessed the twists and turns this thread took over the following nine months. While Doug's recent proposal has certainly been divisive, I'd like to put that proposal to rest and focus back on the initial goal of this thread. Doug put it eloquently in this post back in December that things need to change. I couldn't agree more -- the reasons why have been outlined painstakingly in this thread, particularly in the OP and Doug's initial post. When it comes to growing CAP and allowing us to flourish, the simple proposal of "tighter moderation" and "people should calm down" haven't worked in the past (see: this thread).

Realistically, I'd like to get back to my initial proposal, but with a few tweaks. I'd like for us to try making CAP22 for the CAP Metagame and move forward from there. This would involve minimal shift in policy, in terms of how we run processes and regulate our discussions. The only real shift would be which metagame we focus on. I've detailed the reasons why this is a good idea in the original post of this thread, so please go read there. Once we've finished CAP 22, let's run a reflection on how the process went and see what we'd like to do for the future. This gives us the opportunity to try something new without call for a massive overhaul that the PRC seems to be afraid of as a whole. If we have one of these projects under our belt, we can further assess how (and if) we want to delve into the world of creating our own metagame.

I'm not sure what an alternative would be. Sure, we could say that CAP22 should be made for OU, but at this point, the cat is out of the bag. We've come to the conclusion that there is quite a bit of toxicity in CAP right now, whether that springs from the OU metagame itself or our current userbase is up for debate. But regardless, not doing anything to change up either of those two things means that we are in for a struggle of a process. I would like someone who is more in favor of this proposal to come up with a full, coherent proposal on what we will change if we continue to make CAPs for OU. How can we accommodate for tier changes, for the lack of OU players interested in participating, for the fake necessity to find balance, and for the false belief that our CAPs either succeed or fail? Because in my mind, many of those problems are fixed once we start to build for our own metagame?


I'd like this to be the last topic of this PR thread. If you have any additional topics you think we need to cover in this PR cycle (e.g. I will be making a new thread on Concept Submissions), then please PM one of the CAP moderators for approval to start a new thread. To conclude this topic, please only discuss the merits of building CAP22 for the CAP Metagame or for the OU Metagame. Since DougJustDoug is not directly involved in either proposal, he will still continue to be this thread's closer.
 
If we have one of these projects under our belt, we can further assess how (and if) we want to delve into the world of creating our own metagame. / I'd like this to be the last topic of this PR thread. If you have any additional topics you think we need to cover in this PR cycle (e.g. I will be making a new thread on Concept Submissions), then please PM one of the CAP moderators for approval to start a new thread.
Since this is the final topic with a relatively liked consensus (both by quantities of likes and lack of rebuttal) and it isn't looking to create a brand new metagame but focus on the current CAP metagame as it stands (still attached to OU) it doesn't seem like there's anymore further to discuss on the matter. I can't speak for anyone else but it seems like we've come to a conclusion and should consider moving on with CAP22.
 

Imanalt

I'm the coolest girl you'll ever meet
is a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
I don't know there's anything else for me to raise that hasn't already been raised, but I am very uncomfortable with the fact birkal seems to have decided to move forward with running a cap for the cap metagame despite a significant number of cap veterans (me, stratos, bughouse at least, I don't think dlc has expressed a preference but iirc was at least unsure about this change) disagreeing with the move. So pretty much this is just a "why are we changing the only part of making a cap that people don't agree is a cause of problems?"
 

snake

is a Community Leaderis a Top CAP Contributoris a Contributor to Smogon
CAP Co-Leader
Snakey's anecdote!

So here's kind of the thing. Let's say you have a broken machine (and I think we can all agree that CAP has its hiccups). You don't change more than one part at once...because then you don't know which part fixed it. Instead, a smart person systematically changes each part one at a time until the machine is fixed. Sure, it might take a long time, but you figure out which solutions work and which one's do not work.

In my opinion, this thread is kind of deciding to change a lot of parts at once, and I don't view that as very good. True, it is more noticeable with a process that carries over many weeks to see what works and what doesn't, but I still think the bottom line stands that we should try to change things more or less one at a time.

I believe that Birkal's proposal of shifting our focus to the CAP metagame is a step in the right direction. It will test one solution, and then we will see what happens. Maybe people like me think this will work out, and maybe people like Imanalt, Stratos, and Bughouse won't, but at the end of this CAP, we can see what happened with changing the metagame for which we build. Then, we fix another part of our process or change the metagame focus back. This shouldn't be an opportunity for people to say "Ha! I told you so!" but instead should be an opportunity to try and fix our CAP process.

I also don't like the alternative of sitting here arguing about what might work and what might not, which is what we've been doing. I feel like the best step now is to facilitate the process and then figure out whether this one proposed solution was beneficial or not. Again, I feel like shifting our focus is a good step (read my previous post on retention value :D), but if it turns out to be a complete disaster, I'm ok with it because we figured out that it wasn't the right choice.

Sorry if this post is kind of rambling, but I hope you can get the gist of it. Let's move forward, test one solution at a time, and then determine whether it was a beneficial.
 
I'm in slight disagreement with snake_rattler on this one. We know for a fact that stat limits is a huge sinkhole in public interest and usually doesn't do anything, because everybody comes up with nearly identical stat limits, and there's been enough discussion to suggest concepts is in a similar category. However, it's ridiculous to assume that just fixing that will solve our problems.

When patches go up in an online game, they usually serve one of two purposes: changing and adding features to make the game more enjoyable, and bug fixes. Resolving the issues with stat limits and concepts has started to become more of a bug fix than anything else. Stat limits should have left with the build triangle, since absolutely nobody has had anything positive to say about it and it doesn't actually serve a function. Concepts has been in a state of disrepair for so long now that it's almost become a joke. The fact that every proposal given for fixing CAP has included a simplification of the concept stage should be a pretty huge clue that something's fundamentally broken.

However, just getting CAP into a functioning state again is not going to solve the dwindling retention problem and the toxicity problem. Whether we choose to resolve this by switching to a CAP-focus, or making more regular Flash CAPs, or any number of methods by which to solve this problem, we do need something to change up CAPs features if we want to garner and retain interest in the project.

So I don't agree that we're tackling too much in one go. We're fixing the problems that basically everybody already knows exists and that for the most part everybody agrees on the solution to (reduce complexity in Concepts Stage and dispose of Stat-Limits Stage all-together), while adding basically one new change(New Flash CAPs, switch focus to CAP metagame, Doug's oddball proposal). That's basically the gist of every proposal put forward. Really the only deviation is that Reapehify wants two changes, and I honestly don't think that's really too much to ask.
 

Stratos

Banned deucer.
foreword: sorry for the post being badly written and hard to follow, i started this post at like 2 am

I want to oppose Birkal's proposal, I really do. It's throwing away what I always felt was one of the most basic concepts of CAP, which is that anyone can swing by and contribute—i mean technically, no, it isn't throwing it away, but you're deluded if you think anyone except for CAP-only users is going to learn a new meta so they can contribute. It's going to seclude CAP even more from the rest of Smogon. I want to say that it's a terrible decision, and ideally it would be, but looking from a pragmatic stance of how to best utilize CAP's current resources, it honestly feels like it might be the best decision.

Switching from building CAPs for OU, Smogon's premier metagame, to CAP should be an optics disaster. We've given up on the main thing that tied us to the rest of Smogon and now we're off dawdling in our own stupid fantasy metagame. But the fact is, a lot of regular Smogoners already think that we build for the CAP metagame, so I don't know if it's as much of an optics disaster as it would be in an ideal world. It will drive away anyone who has interest in other parts of the site but also likes to contribute in CAP. That should be a huge problem. But even as things currently stand, basically nobody who does other things on Smogon ever posts in CAP.

But Birkal's proposal sees that even though our process is currently accommodating to people from the rest of Smogon coming in and participating in CAP, they don't do it anyways, and decides that there's no need to continue with this failed outreach if it's going to be a hindrance to utilizing the assets that we do currently have. And the CAP community—the only people who actually contribute to CAP—know CAP a lot better than they know OU, and considering CAP only works when the people building have a decently strong knowledge of what they're building for, we need to work with what we've got and build for the metagame that most CAP participants know best. (I'd like to point out that this proposal literally is 100% founded on this assumption. If the average CAP contributor actually doesn't know CAP better than OU, there's absolutely no reason to make the switch.)

He lists the following things as problems which switching to CAP will help with:
How can we accommodate for tier changes, for the lack of OU players interested in participating, for the fake necessity to find balance, and for the false belief that our CAPs either succeed or fail? Because in my mind, many of those problems are fixed once we start to build for our own metagame?
Honestly, none of these problems are alleviated at all inherently by switching to CAP. The meta will still shift over the course of a CAP, as meta shifts are inevitable, but if the community knows the metagame better then we can stay on top of meta shifts better. The lack of outside blood is only exacerbated by switching to CAP, but we'd adopt the attitude that we didn't want it anyways. The last two are culture problems and have nothing to do with the meta we're building for, but could perhaps be alleviated by people being better at the metagame.

Birkal wants to burn all of the bridges connecting CAP to the rest of Smogon in order to better use CAP's dedicated resources. Ideally, these bridges get a lot of traffic and this is unthinkable, but as of right now these bridges are practically unused and it's kind of hard to argue in favor of keeping around all these useless bridges when it's getting in the way of using CAP regulars to their best potential. But it really bugs me that we're not even having this discussion before burning all of the bridges.

As DOU Leader and later Visual Media Leader a large part of my focus has always been "cross-pollination": how do I get good contributors from other areas of Smogon to check out and hopefully contribute to my area of Smogon? That's basically the entire theory of tournaments like Grand Slam: getting people to try your metagame in the hopes that they like it and stick around. Birkal's proposal is turning the opposite direction: completely abandoning the idea of attracting new blood from other parts of Smogon. CAP is in the unenviable situation where it kind of has to choose one or the other on this issue, since most potential new blood has no interest in OU and may not stick around (or, if they do, will contribute very poorly due to lack of meta knowledge) if we don't build for CAP meta, but anyone who might cross-pollinate would probably only do it if we were building for OU, which is a consequence of pulling the bait-and-switch of mostly attracting new players through the CAP metagame and then going "surprise! we actually care about OU, not CAP."

However, to me, giving up on recruiting existing users just feels wrong. For one, just because cross-pollination is low now doesn't mean it always has to be, but switching to the CAP meta is giving up hope that it will ever increase. But for two, if we isolate ourselves from all existing users who aren't CAPpers, i feel like we're not really a part of Smogon anymore. I take the opposite tack from Birkal. Like I said, right now the problem is that we attract all the CAP-only regulars via the CAP metagame, but we can only "cross-polinate" via the OU metagame. I think cross-pollination fails so hard right now because most CAP posters don't have any experience in OU, because they only play CAP, and that's an annoying situation to be in for someone who does play OU. So if we didn't attract maintain a community by having them practice a skill that was useless towards learning OU to participate in CAP, we could have much better OU players. In other words, I think that if we were to get rid of the CAP meta, we would solve the problem of CAP contributors not maining the metagame which they use to contribute, without having to burn our bridges with the rest of smogon.

^wew I actually didn't know that that would be where my own arguments took me when I started this post, the conclusion surprised me because I did not at all start this post intending to argue for the deletion of the CAP meta but simply to say why I didn't think burning bridges was a good idea
 
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^wew I actually didn't know that that would be where my own arguments took me when I started this post, the conclusion surprised me because I did not at all start this post intending to argue for the deletion of the CAP meta but simply to say why I didn't think burning bridges was a good idea
That's because it's a terrible idea. We go from having very few people entering the project, to having absolutely nobody entering the project. Surely you must realize this is a fan-made pokemon project buried in the boonies of the Smogon forums, right? It's literally listed lower on the forum page than the social media subforum. The social media subforum! The only reason people show up to this project at all is because it produces an actual tangible product on Pokemon Showdown. Honestly, how can you look at the concepts stage where not one of them goes by without at least six people needing to be told CAP doesn't design for CAP to realize that the metagame is really the only reason anybody cares about this project. The CAP metagame is literally the only public face of the CAP project. Without it, we wouldn't have a leg to stand on. If you seriously believe that we'll find more success getting new players locked away in a section of the forum nobody ever goes to than on Pokemon Showdown where everybody and their mother plays, I don't even know what to say.
 

Stratos

Banned deucer.
That's because it's a terrible idea. We go from having very few people entering the project, to having absolutely nobody entering the project. Surely you must realize this is a fan-made pokemon project buried in the boonies of the Smogon forums, right? It's literally listed lower on the forum page than the social media subforum. The social media subforum! The only reason people show up to this project at all is because it produces an actual tangible product on Pokemon Showdown. Honestly, how can you look at the concepts stage where not one of them goes by without at least six people needing to be told CAP doesn't design for CAP to realize that the metagame is really the only reason anybody cares about this project. The CAP metagame is literally the only public face of the CAP project. Without it, we wouldn't have a leg to stand on. If you seriously believe that we'll find more success getting new players locked away in a section of the forum nobody ever goes to than on Pokemon Showdown where everybody and their mother plays, I don't even know what to say.
for over a year during BW the CAP metagame literally wasnt playable (because PO didnt support it) but the CAP project was more active than it is now, and it was still drawing in new posters. So no, I disagree with the idea that the CAP metagame is the only thing holding the CAP community together.
 
For those of you who were able to go through my brick wall of a post, you'll have seen that people, particularly those of OU affinity, have cited major differences between OU culture and CAP culture. We haven't really heard from anyone who represents OU outside of ginganinja partially. Therefore, I decided to go and ask someone who would have a legitimate say in regards to the OU scene: AM.

Here's the short version, a summary by him: [12:10:23] +AM: they should stop trying to attract OU players because it's pointless in the sense the OU players you attract are either bad at OU or don't care about all the project stuff you guys do

Here's the long version:

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/an-adjustment-in-direction.3544802/

Hello. I know we're not properly introduced or any such thing but as the defending champion badgeholder of OU, I figured you could help shed some light on this. Basically, I don't know the competitive OU scene or their interpretation of CAP Project. The link is the current discussion on what should be done with CAP: stick with OU or go with its own metagame involving the creations made. I don't know if you know CAP or care about CAP. But could you share with me your opinions on what you think or know the OU top tier players think of CAP and how/if it would be possible to attract them to CAP. Or would it make more sense for CAP to do its own thing because there's no way to interest you?

Thanks, and I apologize for the abruptness of this conversation.
Hm yeah and also hello there.

I've been lurking that thread from time to time. I think a lot of peoples interpretations of OU, even some of your head leaders, are very misguided if not completely ignorant as Stratos, Bughouse, and ginganinja (who I have a good amount of respect for in policy) have pointed out in their more recent posts.

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/an-adjustment-in-direction.3544802/page-4#post-6702405
[16:51] <Outkal> would you rather make mons for OU or CAP meta
[16:51] <ginganinja> CAP Meta
[16:51] <ginganinja> cos u couldn't make them for OU
[16:51] <ginganinja> gg
[16:51] <ginganinja> and least u guys know your cap meta reallllly well
[16:52] <ginganinja> but too many members of the community dont know anything about OU
[16:52] <ginganinja> and I'm perfectly qualified to say this, because I modded the concept workshop once upon a time and it got really obvious
[16:52] <Outkal> if CAP continues to make mons for OU
[16:53] <Outkal> I may actually prefer it if we were a subforum of the OU forum
[16:53] <Outkal> what do you think ginga
[16:53] <ginganinja> doubtful
[16:53] <Outkal> doubtful in what way
[16:53] <ginganinja> you wouldn't get activity
[16:53] <ginganinja> as a subforum
[16:54] <Outkal> yah but quality would increase
[16:54] <Outkal> because it'd be the people who regular the OU forum going to it
[16:54] <ginganinja> why?
[16:54] <ginganinja> have you seen suspect threads
[16:54] <Outkal> yes ginga
[16:55] <ginganinja> its like 1% of people knowing what they are talking about being drowned out by 99% of people with no clue

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/an-adjustment-in-direction.3544802/page-3#post-6699152

"Basically, I don't know the competitive OU scene or their interpretation of CAP Project." From what I've seen this sums up almost the entirety of your CAP community, or at least a good 95% of it. They simply don't play or understand our tier at a meaningful level where I or many of the top, or even above average players, will ever care or associate with its CAP community. Your community is also very project driven appointed by leaders, some like jas, who I could never take seriously if I wanted an opinion on a state of OU affairs. I wouldn't be able to, as a tier leader, ask his opinions on what direction OU should take for the betterment of the tier due to his clear lack of understanding of anything OU related at our current point in time. CAP from my perspective seems like one giant theorymon for a staple tier that endorses and emphasizes practical playing to further understanding. Ginganinjas point is spot on.

Some time ago aim, if you don't know who he is he's a very well known multi tier SPL level player, tried to join CAP at one point in time. Shortly after he stopped involving himself because the hassle and the lack of OU understanding was not worth the time (I was there when he was bitching on IRC awhile back during a casual discussion). This is the majority of OU community who thinks like this. The only people you will ever really attract are individuals who inevitably branch off from the OU forum, usually these guys end up in Other Metas, for something where they don't feel out of place. CAP from the outside perspective looks like such a daunting process under the guise of learning the OU metagame or the theory of it all, and for what? In the end you don't actually learn the OU metagame, you learn your own CAP metagame, and by then us OU guys have probably been through a good 2-3 smaller meta shifts where the concept of your ideas serve no real purpose outside of CAP.

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/an-adjustment-in-direction.3544802/page-4#post-6712699

This post I just saw is pretty good to summing up what my perspective, and I'm sure a lot of others, think about CAP. There's not a real incentive for any high level players to involve themselves in CAP, they're focused to win, play, and enjoy their own official metagames, metagames that can be acknowledged and will acknowledge success and or hardwork across a large community base. It's what drives a lot of users day after day to do what they do keeping up projects they enjoy and others find enjoyable. Why involve themselves in CAP when most of these projects cater only to your initial CAP playerbase and the OU players involved will normally be those who couldn't really find a place in OU. Guess this is sort of a rant but Birkals proposal of a subforum in OU is silly and it's clearly obvious he's not a consistent OU player based on some of his assumptions. The idea that his proposal would foster more high quality discussion is laughable when they're more focused writing up essays that NO ONE IS GOING TO READ. Ginganinja I think is the only person who has any real connection between OU and CAP which shows how different your communities are.

As far as your "dilemna" about going the CAP or OU metagame. I'd probably just stick with Ginganinjas ideas on that one with the understanding that Bughouse and Stratos, who are not even OU players primarily but follow its trends, are going to understand the dynamics of OU way better than I think most of its communities especially its leaders who have really wrong interpretations of OU. These interpretations are off putting and there's no way you'll attract an OU playerbase ever when these projects are run by what seems like glorified theorymonners in their project phases. I think creating your own CAP meta would be a good idea, starting off in OU would be better and then just go from there without taking it so seriously. Believe me it's a little overdramatic and CAP ties are so loose the whole of Smogon that big changes you make wouldn't even matter nor would people outside of CAP particularly care about.
So, in essence, there's nothing we could do to attract OU players because at the heart of it all, it's just silly theorymoning and pandering to our core - which is to vastly different (and uneducated) to even attempt for you to contend with. Is that about it?

And with that, do I have your consent to post this in the thread? I feel your voice might shed some light on why we shouldn't stick with OU.
I don't mind if you post my response but I don't think it'll exactly shed light on why you shouldn't stick to OU more so why trying to attract an OU playerbase is an enormous uphill battle that might have to do with a cultural problem? Idk honestly, that seems like more of a CAP thing than an OU one. I don't know outside of that thread and what I've heard and glimpsed at I think your leaders need to bite the bullet and realize OU and CAP are entirely different metas and communities and closing the bridge seems rather useless to me. If you end up posting it post this response to.


This isn't the first person from OU (i.e. ginganinja) to say we should move away from OU because we can't keep up with the metagame with the rate of our process OR attract OU players who play OU well (and also no one knows fuck all about OU, anyway). He even mentions the cultural differences. This is all verbatim in the entirety of the context as well, so there's no misrepresentation here. With that, let's listen to the echoing sound coming from OU elite and move away from this supposed struggle between OU/CAP. We can all see where we need to go.
 

snake

is a Community Leaderis a Top CAP Contributoris a Contributor to Smogon
CAP Co-Leader
I'm in slight disagreement with snake_rattler on this one. We know for a fact that stat limits is a huge sinkhole in public interest and usually doesn't do anything, because everybody comes up with nearly identical stat limits, and there's been enough discussion to suggest concepts is in a similar category. However, it's ridiculous to assume that just fixing that will solve our problems.

When patches go up in an online game, they usually serve one of two purposes: changing and adding features to make the game more enjoyable, and bug fixes. Resolving the issues with stat limits and concepts has started to become more of a bug fix than anything else. Stat limits should have left with the build triangle, since absolutely nobody has had anything positive to say about it and it doesn't actually serve a function. Concepts has been in a state of disrepair for so long now that it's almost become a joke. The fact that every proposal given for fixing CAP has included a simplification of the concept stage should be a pretty huge clue that something's fundamentally broken.

However, just getting CAP into a functioning state again is not going to solve the dwindling retention problem and the toxicity problem. Whether we choose to resolve this by switching to a CAP-focus, or making more regular Flash CAPs, or any number of methods by which to solve this problem, we do need something to change up CAPs features if we want to garner and retain interest in the project.

So I don't agree that we're tackling too much in one go. We're fixing the problems that basically everybody already knows exists and that for the most part everybody agrees on the solution to (reduce complexity in Concepts Stage and dispose of Stat-Limits Stage all-together), while adding basically one new change(New Flash CAPs, switch focus to CAP metagame, Doug's oddball proposal). That's basically the gist of every proposal put forward. Really the only deviation is that Reapehify wants two changes, and I honestly don't think that's really too much to ask.
This is all true; I think you've convinced me otherwise. Normally, when I problem-solve, after I look at the problem from every angle, the machine anecdote is basically how I go about it once I've thought up of a few potential solutions. I was hoping we could similarly apply it to CAP, but as you've pointed out, we could potentially solve these problems in one fell swoop. Or it might take a few, and this is where the machine anecdote sort of applies.

So. Ignore most of my last post...I really took it too far. I guess what I was trying to really get at was we need to actually start trying solutions out. We can debate here about what will and won't work, but if we have some good ideas, we should test them out. We shouldn't rush off if there are dissenters, but we also shouldn't be going in circles when we have potential solutions.

As I said two posts ago, I feel like building for the CAP Metagame will be a good change because a) retention value for both new players and veterans of playing with the mon made besides the playtest, which is really skewed anyways, b) populating the chatroom so that people can participate in flashcaps and know when the next cap/cap process stage will happen, c) and appeal to players like me who love the CAP meta but hate OU (and I know there quite a few of us).

The only disadvantage is that we don't get people from OU anymore, but wait we really don't anyways.
 

DougJustDoug

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(This is a rewrite/repackaging of stuff I posted in the CAP PS room yesterday, so if you were in the room, you've heard most of this already)

I want to bring up some things I've been discussing with players of the CAP metagame, in terms of this proposed change in direction to build pokemon explicitly for the CAP meta. Because there is a fundamental assumption I am making (hoping for), that may turn out to be incorrect, in terms of how CAP players regard the meta and new participants.

My contention all along is not that "OU is bad for CAP" because of OU popularity. If it's a popularity thing, no doubt OU is the way to go for us. I think "OU is bad for CAP" because of the culture that has developed around OU and CAP. Or more specifically, the culture of some of the OU players that have tended to participate in CAP in recent years. Which I think is an extension of the general mentality of OU overall. So I've been a proponent of CAP moving away from OU. And my main goal of that is to distance the CAP project culture from a couple of cultural values that I think are prevalent with many OU players:
  • An obsession with getting the metagame "right". Which means "success" and "failure" are a very Big Deal™ in OU.
  • A belief that input from top players is the most important thing. And input from less-than-top players, needs to be actively weeded out and discouraged.
Both of those things are essential to making the current Smogon tiering process work, they are now fundamental building blocks of the entire Smogon tiering effort, with OU at the center of it all. Both of those things, I think, are detrimental to CAP. Specifically:
  • We shouldn't be so obsessed with "success" and "failure".
  • We shouldn't minimize input from less-than-top players.

Keep in mind, I don't think "OU is bad". I just feel like CAP needs to focus on a metagame that is not as obsessed with success and failure, and one that is more generally accepting of input from a wider range of players ("range" being defined in terms of battling skill). If CAP could improve its culture along these lines, we could perhaps someday move back to OU, and somewhat resist these specific "cultural influences" of OU later. That is, assuming we could get the desired CAP culture more firmly ingrained in the near future.

Ok, so with that out of the way, lemme get to the big assumption that I want to mention here, that can really only be addressed by CAP meta players.

I'm assuming the CAP meta is NOT like OU.
  1. The CAP meta is NOT obsessed with "success" and "failure", because they have NO CHOICE as to what they get from the CAP project. They just "accept everything" currently.
  2. The CAP meta is NOT uninviting to new players, because from what I've seen in the CAP PS room, those guys actively try to encourage new people to play there.

I'm assuming those two things about the CAP meta culture that will help the current CAP project get out of its current cultural funk. But if my take on the culture in the CAP meta is wrong, then building for the CAP meta will not help the CAP project in the ways I think we need to be helped.

A potential wrinkle in my assumption is this -- I sometimes get the sense that the CAP meta badly WANTS to be like OU. And that "wannabe syndrome" might mean that the current culture of the CAP meta is not the desired state -- it's just the way it is until the CAP meta "grows up and becomes more like OU". Does that make sense?

So I guess the direct question is -- Are those two things I mentioned, real desired aspects of the culture of the CAP meta?

I've always (since like 2008 or 2009) been opposed to building for the CAP meta. Mainly because I believe CAP-focused metagame discussions will be a big turnoff to players. Particularly newer players, which honestly is our only real recruiting base. Newer players already have an issue acclimating themselves to competitive pokemon lingo. It just gets worse when the Pokemon being mentioned most often in the discussion are not in the Pokedex that they know and love. I can imagine an exchange like this:

"CAP Vet: That's a good suggestion for the stat spread, CAP Master, but I think our famous Flying Prankster will eat that for lunch."
"CAP Noob: Hi new here, and just want to chime in that I don't see Thundurus being an issue for this mon because of A, B, and C."
"CAP Vet: Who the fuck cares about Thundurus? We were obviously concerned with Tomohawk."
"CAP Noob: Whats a Tomohawk?"
"CAP Vet: lol. gtfo noob."

That kind of convo gives me nightmares.

Admittedly, that convo example is very exaggerated. I don't think any CAP meta regular would ever say "gtfo noob" to anyone. But the general point was -- Will new players feel alienated because they don't have any familiarity at all with our pokemon?

Let me pose my concerns another way.

Suppose I accept that people that play the CAP meta actively are pretty much JUST into the CAP meta. Not just in terms of Smogon overall, but even the CAP forum project itself. CAP Meta players are in the CAP PS room, and pretty much only in the CAP PS room, for the most part.

IF that is true (not saying it is, but IF it is) and we change the direction of the CAP project to target the CAP meta -- Then my guess is that many, many, many posters on the CAP forum will have very little REAL knowledge of the CAP meta. BUT -- they will post what they do know, and probably influence voters heavily. In fact, there will probably be LEADERS of competitive steps that are NOT very good at the CAP Meta AND -- the only people that will REALLY know this, are the active CAP players in the PS CAP room.

Will such a thing, if it does happen, piss people off in the CAP meta? Will active CAP meta players be driven to post on the forum and call out the players making what they see as "blatantly incorrect" posts? Will we just go from the frying pan to the fire? Will we replace smug elitist OU battlers with smug elitist CAP battlers?

That brings me full circle, back to my original assumptions about the culture amongst the CAP meta players. And if my assumptions are wrong, then I'd like to know right now. If the culture of the CAP meta is not really strong from a open, accepting, inviting standpoint -- I don't think the CAP project will gain much from targeting the CAP meta as our new direction.

-----------

And one last point about this notion of "making CAP great again". Even though I know that's just a cheeky slogan, I think a lot of people reading this thread are getting the wrong idea.

CAP was never really "great" in the eyes of Smogon overall. But, in general, CAP used to have a really high internal opinion of itself. CAP thought CAP was great. Over the last few years, CAP has started wearing a hair shirt and beating itself up. That's a huge reason, IMO, for us to try to "change direction". Not because we'll suddenly become the cool kids in Smogon. But for CAP to restore its self-respect and our own internal excitement for creating Pokemon.
 

Imanalt

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And one last point about this notion of "making CAP great again". Even though I know that's just a cheeky slogan, I think a lot of people reading this thread are getting the wrong idea.

CAP was never really "great" in the eyes of Smogon overall. But, in general, CAP used to have a really high internal opinion of itself. CAP thought CAP was great. Over the last few years, CAP has started wearing a hair shirt and beating itself up. That's a huge reason, IMO, for us to try to "change direction". Not because we'll suddenly become the cool kids in Smogon. But for CAP to restore its self-respect and our own internal excitement for creating Pokemon.
There's a lot I disagree with in your post, but I'm going to start with this. When i joined cap a few years back, it definitely was not well-thought of among the rest of smogon, I'll agree with that. But since then the reputation of cap has plummeted outside of cap by more than it has inside of cap. This is why I've been one of the most vocal people complaining about our issues, because I am mostly friends with people outside of cap on smogon, rather than inside of it, so I heard all of this. Most of the site now puts us on the same tier as asb (sorry boys), which was just not the case a couple years ago. We have gotten so much negative stigma with the rest of the site that it has completely destroyed our flow of new users from smogon into cap. Its what's gotten us into this whole situation in general where we are now completely giving up on recruiting from the rest of smogon.

I don't think its too late for us to fix that situation though. Maybe I'm hopelessly optimistic, but I believe if we made an active effort to try to improve our knowledge of competitive play, and make the process set up more in a way to work for more competitive players, and showed that we were making that effort (especially with the potential lure of a badge) we could start to bring people who actually play this game back into cap. Maybe it is too late, and our reputation has gone so much to shit that we won't be able to bring anyone over. But we don't know that until we try seriously to make changes to be more welcoming to and more like the rest of smogon (the communities that a lot of people in this thread describe as the "ou people," that is, the people who play pokemon at a more serious, competitive level). It seems ridiculously pessimistic, and a whole lot like just giving up on cap to say that we have too big of a culture difference from the rest of the site to keep even trying to recruit from it, and so we should just abandon it and look within to try to make our current userbase's contributions more valuable and knowledgeable. And honestly, if that is our message, why the hell are we still on smogon? Why do we fit better here, where we have established such a big culture difference with the rest of the site, rather than somewhere else that maybe we would fit in better? I don't know, I'm just very troubled by the line of thought where our culture is irreparably different from the culture of the rest of smogon.


That whole thing aside, there is another big flaw in DougJustDoug 's post. I think he badly stereotypes the rest of the smogon community as uninviting. Smogon as a whole isn't uninviting. If it was it wouldn't still be growing. The smogon community as a whole just expects that people attempt to know what they know and what they don't, ask when they don't understand something, and not attempt to throw forward opinions that are (to the rest of the community) clearly poor and uneducated. Is it really that much to ask when attempting to build a project devoted to learning, that people attempt to first glean that information they know, and that which they don't?

I guess I just want to wrap up by saying that I don't think its coincidence that almost every one of our users who is still at all a part of the rest of the smogon community has been consistently disagreeing with the move to the cap meta.
 

DougJustDoug

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I agree I need to clarify my comments about the CAP meta being "not like OU" and saying the CAP meta is "not uninviting". Because I agree that sounds like I am saying OU doesn't want new players, which is obviously not true. Smogon has a deep history of inviting new players into the fold of competitive pokemon. As evidenced by our onsite guides and reference information for new players, our Battling 101 tutoring program which is one of the oldest programs in all of Smogon, and even our community name "Smogon University" which captures the essence of our desire to teach and help others. Smogon in general, and OU specifically, is NOT uninviting to newcomers.

Smogon tiering, which revolves around OU at its core, IS VERY uninviting to less-than-top-skilled battlers -- and that is by design. It's not a bad thing for Smogon tiering. It's actually an essential element of how we have set up Smogon tiering efforts, so hopefully no one gets defensive over this assertion.

My contention is that somewhere along the way, CAP shifted from us experimenting and learning about OU -- and we somehow got hooked into the notion that we were trying to "fix" OU or "make it balanced" or whatever. And unfortunately, the ideas of "fixing" or "balancing" OU, overlaps MASSIVELY with the aims, goals, and processes of Smogon tiering. And that, I contend, is a significant reason CAP has developed the "uninviting" cultural expectations I mentioned earlier.

So, no, I don't think Smogon overall is uninviting. Quite the contrary. I also don't think OU as a metagame or battling community is uninviting overall. But our tiering efforts in Smogon/OU are intentionally constructed to be very exclusive, with the expectation to hit a very high standard in terms of "success" and "failure" towards making good tiers and rulesets. And because CAP projects somehow got warped into similar expectations, we have adopted similar cultural values. And we need to break from that.

And I will continue to point out that I have worked very hard in Smogon for many years to help establish and support our tiering processes and efforts. I am very proud of the work I have done and successes Smogon has achieved as the premier competitive Pokemon community. My belief that CAP needs to be different than OU tiering is NOT a statement that Smogon is bad or OU tiering is bad, it's just a statement that CAP ain't OU tiering, and never will be.
 
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Suppose I accept that people that play the CAP meta actively are pretty much JUST into the CAP meta. Not just in terms of Smogon overall, but even the CAP forum project itself. CAP Meta players are in the CAP PS room, and pretty much only in the CAP PS room, for the most part.

IF that is true (not saying it is, but IF it is) and we change the direction of the CAP project to target the CAP meta -- Then my guess is that many, many, many posters on the CAP forum will have very little REAL knowledge of the CAP meta. BUT -- they will post what they do know, and probably influence voters heavily. In fact, there will probably be LEADERS of competitive steps that are NOT very good at the CAP Meta AND -- the only people that will REALLY know this, are the active CAP players in the PS CAP room.

Will such a thing, if it does happen, piss people off in the CAP meta? Will active CAP meta players be driven to post on the forum and call out the players making what they see as "blatantly incorrect" posts? Will we just go from the frying pan to the fire? Will we replace smug elitist OU battlers with smug elitist CAP battlers?

That brings me full circle, back to my original assumptions about the culture amongst the CAP meta players. And if my assumptions are wrong, then I'd like to know right now. If the culture of the CAP meta is not really strong from a open, accepting, inviting standpoint -- I don't think the CAP project will gain much from targeting the CAP meta as our new direction.
I want to give my opinion on two key points that Doug brought up:

1) Part of our current leadership does not play the CAP metagame - how on earth are they going to be leaders in future processes building for it?
2) How do we know that building for the CAP metagame won't result in exactly the same problems as OU did?

I'll start with the first one. I'd estimate that of the 32 current PRC members, half or less play CAP meta regularly enough to "REALLY" know the metagame (as Doug put it). I'd rather not name names, but this is a very real problem that Doug has brought to light - How will leaders lead discussion on the CAP metagame if some haven't played for over a year?

It has been a grievance for both myself and many other CAP metagame players that the leadership was so distant from the CAP metagame, both in participaiton and attitude towards it. I am yet to personally decide my own view on whether it would be best to build for CAP or for OU, but regardless of the best option, if we do decide to build for CAP, there is a huge opportunity to fix something which has plagued CAP for a long time: the animosity between and separation of CAP meta players and CAP process contributors.

If we do decide to build for the CAP metagame, our leaders need to set an example of the rest of the userbase and make sure they brush up on their CAP meta (by playing it on the simulator) in the same way they expect new CAP contributors to currently (except the new users are currently expected to brush up on OU rather than CAP).

That leads me onto my second point: How do we know that building for the CAP metagame won't result in exactly the same problems as OU did?

Imanalt posted while I was writing this, and he mentions a basic expectation of new users to 'know what they (the old users) know'. I'm not sure I agree with his choice of words, but the point is that new users should have a basic level of knowledge both of competitive battling and of the metagame we're building for, which I mentioned in the previous paragraph.

To try answer the question in bold above, Doug asks two main questions: Is CAP 'inviting' enough to improve member enlistment and retention? and Is CAP different enough from OU to avoid the problem of too much focus on perfection/success?

In the last few years since I joined the CAP metagame, CAP metagame has been the Smogon equivalent of a poor man. We never had the luxury of a consistent influx of players, and many of our lower ladder players leave something to be desired in terms of competitive ability and knowledge. Regarded as an irrelevancy by not only the regular PS community, but also by our own colleagues in the process, the CAP meta community has adapted to make the most of its predicament. Since the number of incoming users is so low, the meta community is/has to be very welcoming to any new users regardless of competitive ability. If you speak to any CAP room staff member who has laddered/been in room tours, they'll tell you about the countless times they've given useful links and verbal advice to noobs. Some users even do unofficial 1 to 1 tutoring to help both current users and noobs. The room will often spring to life after being inactive for a while to help out in a request for teambuilding help. I'm not here to sing the praises of the CAP room staff, but I am here to point out that most of the people in the CAP room (regardless of rank) are willing to go very far to help out new users, and there is no reason to assume that this wouldn't continue from the PS room and into the creation process.

A lot has been said about OU, its core values and how it may be damaging CAP in this thread. In the CAP room, you're punished for being a negative chat presence, but you'll be helped out regardless of how bad you are. Even in the forum, where irrelevant posts are hidden, CAP meta leaders have showcased a willingness to allow less skilled users to write analyses and even host forum events, as well as a general gentleness to those less knowledgeable in meta threads. Doug posted another post during the writing of this post talking about the tiering process of Smogon and how it has affected CAP culture, and I'd like to reiterate his earlier point about CAP meta not having choice in its tiering (both in terms of incoming CAPs and also in terms of having to adhere to the OU banlist). One would imagine this would mean a detachment from the sucess/failure culture that tiering brings.

I will be completely honest and say I don't really know if CAP suffers from 'wannabe syndrome', but I do know that the CAP room is just generally a more 'chill' environment than the process (and OU generally) is. Although nobody likes to be wrong or to listen to wrong statements, there is a lot more focus on being happy rather than 'correct' in the meta, because the environment is different (people come to have fun, which is what CAP was meant to be). This thread was created to fix the problem of the toxic environment of the process, and so one would imagine increasing the influence of the CAP meta, a place known for its relaxed atmosphere, would be a positive step.

Essentially, this topic comes down to a simple choice: Do we give up on our connection to the 'mainstream' of Showdown in the hope of boosting user knowledge and removing the toxic environment, becoming an OM in a way we weren't before, or do we want to focus on making CAP respected within Smogon to try and bring in top OU players at the cost of having to remove very widespread cultural views about CAP?

If we do decide to build for the CAP meta, I think there will be tangible advantages to the cohesion between the CAP communities in its process and meta branches, but a point I'd also like to raise is whether it'd be more logical to have one last go at trying to make CAP respected within the mainstream of PS given that losing our connection to OU may be a point of no return in terms of shaping CAP's image.

Disclaimer: I think I've written myself into circles (my head is spinning IRL rn), so I hope you can follow what I've written.
 

snake

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Alright I've read these last few posts, and I think I've got another analogy for this. Hopefully this one is better.

Consider opening a pack of scissors (a really annoying not-easy-to-open package) without a pair of scissors. You run into a "vicious cycle."

1: "I need to open this pack of scissors."
2: "I need scissors to open this package."

Why I call this a "vicious cycle" is because you can sit and think about this over and over and over forever and you'll never get anywhere without intervening. You want to open the scissors, but you need the scissors in the package to open the package to get the scissors, but you need the scissors...etc. There are a couple of ways to overcome the vicious cycle.

a) You try to rip it open and have a hard time because seriously those packages suck.
b) You find another pair of scissors/some other sharp object.

This is short cycle, but I hope you get the gist of it.


So now that I've gotten that out of the way, I'd like to place the elitism of CAP into a vicious cycle because I think it fits it to some extent.

1: "We don't want CAP to be elitist."
2: "We make CAP open to anyone, but the grand majority is uneducated in process/OU or CAP metagame/whatever."
3: "CAP discussion get stopped up/tensions rise/voting becomes skewed."
4: "We make a minimum threshold so discussion/voting flows smoothly."

So there are a few intermediate steps I missed, but they're kind of half steps. We don't want CAP to be elitist, so we allow anyone to join. However, many new users don't actually look at the discussion or even the rules before voting, so they don't know what the hell is going on and basically vote blindly. There are also those who don't know what CAP is/are fairly new to CAP and post something, but it "interrupts" the flow of the discussion. This makes some veterans mad because they just want a smooth chat to discuss the new CAP. One such solution might be (and I've heard it before even in my short time here): "Ok. Since we don't want people to vote blindly/post badly, lets make a requirement to vote or participate in a flashcap/CAP prevo so they know what's going on." This is where the vicious cycle loops back. If we make this requirement, CAP becomes elitist, and we don't want that, so we make it open to anyone, but then discussion clogs up and voting is half blind, etc.

Like the other vicious cycle, we have to overcome this never-ending loop. I see a few solutions (bear in mind I don't fully support/fully detest either of these)

a) We accept that we are going to be elitist. If we do this, we can set a minimum threshold and hope things work. However, I can see how many people would be against this, as it goes against what CAP was made for.
b) We make efforts to inflate and educate the populous for whatever metagame we build for. This would be a little more realistic for the CAP Meta as we can control the chatroom to a higher degree than the OU room, but it's still a hefty task in and of itself. In addition, most of our leadership doesn't play CAP anyways as KhosroTheGreat pointed out (not trying to knock people down, but it's still a bit of an issue).

Obviously these are two extremes, and there's definitely gray area between them, but I hope I've outlined this part of the situation correctly. If it's not quite right, I hope it is still helpful.


One thing I wanted to address is that reading through all of the previous CAP processes is actually one of the most educating things I've probably ever done for myself in CAP. I first stumbled onto the Syclant process, read all the way through Plasmanta, and noticed all of the flaws, how people view "intelligent posting", how skewed voting could be. This is not to say that I loved reading through all of it; I seriously enjoyed just binge-reading the CAP archive instead of Red Sorghum for summer reading. After reading most of the processes, I joined CAP, and I think it was good for me entering the meta, knowing how these CAP were built (even though time has tested some of the older ones). I don't know if we should have people read through at least one, but it might me a good idea to consider.
 
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Bughouse

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The writing is on the wall.

If you think the "OU players" (not that most of who you're referring to even plays OU frequently anymore. Just call us/them competitive players... or if you want to be less euphemistic, good players) involved in CAP are a negative influence, that's fine. It's your project. We'll leave, but you can do whatever you want. I just really don't see the point of involving all of us in a discussion that dragged on for months when your mind seems to have been made up from the beginning. It's frankly insulting to those contributors who have put countless hours into CAP over the years to be so underhanded about hearing their input and then ignoring it.
 
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