this will be a series of scattered, likely poorly-conveyed thoughts and considerations from tlt member yours truly
Right to kick off, I find myself partially responsible for the somewhat confused and "overtuned" nature of our moves stages and 1.0 movepool. This was my first time having served, and I struggled to fully understand what exactly our Defining Moves stages were working towards (quziel had to help me figure this out later on in the project). Now, a good chunk of the blame lies in the stages themselves: the CAP Policy Review section has a thread dedicated to "
Re-Defining Moves" and in there I
share my own thoughts on the matter and what aspects of the stage feels suboptimal for our goals. It's an excellent thread and I implore everyone to make sure they've caught up on the discussion.
As for our final movepool, I definitely approached it the way I did because of the negative stigma some users had about CAP32. I wasn't exactly separate from this group either: our chosen type and stat spread were both in the lower half of my preferences. A handful, however, felt we had dropped the ball with CAP32, a sentiment that I absolutely do not agree with at any point until we've actually used the mon and had time to assess it. So, with the dour outlook a couple vocal users had, and my own reservations on the viability of our stat spread, my outlooked heavily shifted to "We need our movepool to hard carry the process," and it was this philosophy that I carried throughout the Movesets stage.
Hemogoblin's movepool is genuinely crazy: you have a strong as hell HP Draining attack, far above the likes the 75 BP group, a strong as hell Priority move that outcompetes weaker priority moves, and a great boosting move in Bulk Up that lets us hit and tank hits even better. Hemogoblin's biggest strengths right now, outside of being dropped in a pretty hospitable environment with all the offense around, is it's ability to just
dodge damage. Bitter Blade lets you regain lost health as you dish out damage, Extreme Speed prevents frail and/or Fairy-weak Pokemon from damaging you at all, and Bulk up reduces the Physical damage you take while increasing the damage of your other two damage-dodging attacks, only making them better at keeping you healthy. Close CAP friends of mine have shared this sentiment of Hemogoblin being very annoying to make progress against because it's moves just deny you the ability to trade positively. This cohesion between these three moves was obvious from the very beginning, and I should have had faith in such a set being sufficient enough to give our CAP a place.
But I didn't. I wanted to ensure that CAP 32 would work, and sought to give it a wide assortment of options that, as things stand now, simply aren't worth using. Special Sets are largely a non-factor in Hemogoblin's metagame presence: you might encounter it on Trick Room, but I wager it has no real effect on Hemo's viability. The reason you account for this mon in your builder, or add it to your team, is because you force stuff out with Extreme Speed, harass switch-ins with Knock, and aim to win late-game with Bulk Up's buffs and the combination of outpacing and outhealing the opponent's means of KOing you. Our movepool being so stacked was deliberate. I wanted CAP 32 to find itself a niche, to dispel the belief that we'd faltered in our direction, and once that niche was found, we could then cut out whatever was superfluous. This is not an approach I am a fan of, but it was an option that I could pursue that only increased our likelihood of a successful release, and that's what I valued most.
Let me step back a bit from the soapbox. Do I feel CAP 32 was a success? My metric from this is based largely on what Death2theWest outlined as his interpretation of Bang Average: a mon whose stats are not up to par with where it wants them to be. In this regard, I feel we've hit quite close to the bullseye. Hemogoblin wants a couple things with its stat spread:
- Hit as hard as possible to make Extreme Speed and Bitter Blade efficient at KOing key threats and keeping us healthy.
- Don't get outspeed by genuinely slow Pokemon.
- Have the bulk to tank hits on targets you can't handle with Extreme Speed.
There is no real satisfactory EV spread to accomplish all this. I find that a normal CAP stat spread generally has very specific stats to solidify our matchups: note how Mollux is one Base Speed below Heatran, and Saharaja one above. You can quickly tell how these Pokemon are meant to interact with Heatran. Hemogoblin doesn't operate like this, and I feel it lies solely in the fact that we just aren't as fast as we want. I find myself constantly wishing I didn't need speed for Equilibra, or Venomicon, or certain Kingambit, but I really want that Speed. Yet, to invest in Speed on a mon that may only click Espeed three times during a match feels wrong when you could allocate that investment into more Attack or better defenses. Now, I find that our stats are actually a little
too good in areas. Specifically, we hit quite hard and cheat many otherwise bad matchups into good ones, for our bulk to be as good as it is. But I do find this aspect of our base stats suffering from "508 EVs syndrome," even if a small amount, to point us in favor of a successful concept. I do not like the view of Bang Average being an "aesthetics" things, where because we don't have a base stat over the nice, arbitrary 100 threshold, our statline is below the curve. It's about BSR, the efficiency of our statline, and the many things that interact with it.
This next section is actually just Darek's post above. Please read it and react accordingly if you haven't: it's potentially the most well-written post relating to CAP 32 that currently exists.
Onto specific questions:
What was it like working with a stats-focused concept compared to other projects that explored the importance of Typing, Ability, or Moves?
Not an original opinion as it's from a Discord call I was in with quziel and a slowly uninebriating Brambane, but doing a "stats" concept and then doing them last is kinda silly looking back. Yeah, maybe we didn't have the knowledge or means to approach it from a better angle, but it is weird that our stats, the critical component of our concept, was just a vague idea of "being average" for a majority of the process, instead of something we properly addressed. Yes, doing stat stuff early is a scary prospect, but there are ways we could have made it work, and regardless it would have taught us a whole lot about the inner workings of CAP and its stages. The way Bang Average worked out is us recognizing that our stats aren't going to be up to metagame standards, whatever that results in, and thus pursuing a collection of traits that would help us function in spite of lower stats. Thus, a strong offensive type, a great Ability, and a complimentary movepool. How different would things have turned out if we had actual stats, or stat limits to work with from the beginning?
I still feel we have much to explore with stats in CAP. Stat spreads across the board are excellent: even those that have languished in poor performance like Malaconda, Voodoom, and Kerfluffle, don't exactly have bad stats. We enjoy making CAPs with bulk that lets them win the matchups they are supposed to, hit the damage thresholds they need, and fall within a specific Speed tier. We also never want to go overboard with stats, so you end up with spread that are often well-rounded, often with a dump attacking stat and low Speed if it doesn't care about Speed. Hemogoblin hasn't really diverged from this pattern, and it's a bit sad IMO. I was hoping for a more extreme and distinct spread; instead, we got a slightly smaller stat ball compared to our usual stat ball. I'm still eagerly awaiting the day we make something truly unique among the CAPs: I desire a mon with 150+ in a stat, or a spread that resembles Gen 1 Ground/Rock types. I'm bored with these "generalist spreads," give me the unapologetic Physical bias of Great Tusk, or the complete disregard for offenses on Toxapex, or the single-minded goal of Breloom to hit like a truck and do nothing else.
For longtime CAP posters, were there any harmful patterns or trends––whether in discussion, voting, our general mindsets, or anything else––from previous CAPs that we saw manifest once again in CAP32? How can we avoid repeatedly running into these pitfalls?
I guess I qualify as "long-term?" I'll list two.
- Roles. I do not like how Roles are implemented. Please read this thread to learn more about issues I have with Roles.
- I do not like the sway "flavor" has on our competitive design. When I say "flavor' I mean anything that isn't pertinent to how our CAP will perform in the metagame. For CAP 32 specifically, I feel Fire/Fairy was as popular as it was because it was a novel typing people felt was "overdue." Our typing should be chosen because it's been identified as the best fit to fulfill our typing. CAP has historically done this "novel typing thing," with about half our CAPs having a type that was unused during the time of its creation. We can't keep avoiding a repeat typing or exploring an unused one forever. I feel like this is something the Typing Leader can somewhat address with discernment or perhaps additional powers should we desire, but largely requires a paradigm shift among voters to focus on "concept relevancy" versus "cool factor."
CAP 32 diverged a little bit from the "traditional" process structure, with some stages being reordered and some being new altogether. Was this restructuring helpful or hurtful to CAP32 overall? What could have been done differently, and why? How would you feel about experimenting even more with process structure in the future?
I am a believer in the CAP Process not being a strict schedule, but rather a selection of steps we can use however we wish to complete the task at hand. I felt that our approach to Defining Moves, in spite of the issues that arose, was an excellent idea. We tend to not like polljumping in CAP, but it's very hard to not go into a stage without some sense of what we're going to do, or what someone wants to do, lurking in the background. The ability to have an idea of what moves we expect to use, or
will use, helped make later stages more informed. I think there's a lot we can do with experimenting on the CAP process and being open to new ideas on making a cohesive product. I'd rather not get into all of it right now, as many ideas are bound to be highly controversial, but we only stand to gain from learning what does and doesn't work during a CAP Process, and with Gen 9 being a bit messy, I feel now is a great time to see just what we can do.
Overall, I am very happy with how CAP 32 turned out. There was a lot going against us, from the variety of concept interpretations among users, to the looming presence of the Home update, and the uncertainties of how Terastallization impacts CAP on a fundamental level. There's a fair bit of fat we can trim off Hemogoblin, but in terms of succeeding with a less-than-satisfactory stat spread and operating upon a unique niche, we've done a pretty damn good job. CAP has this remarkable ability to take seemingly wrong turns yet arrive somewhere you're happy with at the end of it all, and CAP 32 is no exception in my book. Anyway can our next CAP be a Ground/Water with Aggron stats but swapped offenses, Oblivious/Sticky Hold as Abilities, and access to Nidoking's entire Gen 8 movepool.
I would like to thank
Peshay Studio Set (1996) and
The Italo NONSTOP megamix for helping me make this post.
