Before you vote, it's important that you read through each concept carefully, as well as look at our TL
ausma's final post in the concept submissions thread with their justification for each that made the slate, since this concept will guide the discussion for the rest of the CAP Process.
This is linked here.
This will be a Ranked Pairs vote (RP) (a form of voting where each candidate is ranked according to head to head matchups with each of its competitors in a directed acyclic graph), the details of which were discussed
here.
This is a ranked vote: order does matter! You can upvote your favorites and downvote your least favorites. You may choose to rank as many or as few options as you like, but we encourage you to rank as many options as possible to ensure your preferences are taken into account fully.
Bold your votes and nothing else!
A typical vote might look like the following:
Most Preferred
Second Most Preferred
Third Most Preferred
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IMPORTANT: When voting,
use only the exact name of the concept submissions as listed below! The concept submissions are quoted below in order of submission:
Version 3.3
Name: Version 3.3
Description: A Pokemon that attempts to recreate the playstyle and niche of a lower tier Pokemon from this generation.
Justification: Is there a Pokemon you like that you think is really cool competitively but are saddened to find it is actually unviable? Let's fix that by making a better version of it! This concept aims to explore strategies and niches seen by lower tier Pokemon, analyze why they don't work in the CAP metagame, and adjust it so that it is viable in the metagame.
Questions To Be Answered:
- What causes the strategies of various lower tier Pokemon to be unviable in the metagame?
- How do we replicate a lower tier Pokemon while preserving its identity?
- Are certain lower tier Pokemon limited by the quality of the set itself rather than their innate traits, and therefore poor targets for this concept?
- How close does CAP 33 have to be to the Pokemon it is replicating in terms of traits?
Very Fast Immovable Object
Title: Very Fast Immovable Object
Description: This is a wall that has a high speed stat
Justification: When designing a wall, we typically prioritize defensive typing, defensive stats, and ability choice the most, with offensive prowess and speed being secondary considerations at best. This concept aims to explore how the general considerations for designing a wall change when said wall actually has the speed stat to change how it interacts with the offensive threats it's expected to take on.
Questions:
- How and why does the Speed stat matter for a wall.
- When and why does outrunning an offensive threat matter?
- Is speed only useful for letting a wall force a KO on a threat before said threat can KO it? What formes of utility / recovery are strongly speed dependent?
- Are there any options that are open to a wall specifically because of a high speed stat that may not be open to slower walls, even accounting for ability choice?
- What makes fast walls decide to not just invest in their offenses?
- Does being a "Fast Wall" imply some level of offensive presence? Is offensive presence necessary to truly reap the rewards of going very fast?
Position is Key
Name: Position is Key
Description: This CAP excels during one particular stage of the game, at the cost of being weaker than average during other stages of the game
Justification: Designing a CAP that explores how to excel in one particular game state seems hard to do since most game states are very fluid; however, it would be neat to see how each team archetype (stall, balance, and offense) could justify a CAP that isn't as great in one state of the game yet is the absolute best in another state. Rarely are gamestates ever used as a means to provide evidence for making progress for the team's goal whatever that may be. I think it would be neat to see how a Pokemon could make said progress based on what gamestate it is in rather than it being generally good.
Questions To Be Answered:
•How do playstyles and movepools differ between game states? Does a Pokemon that excels earlier need to set up? Does a Pokemon that excels later need to lay entry hazards?
•How does a Pokemon's role differ within each game state depending on team composition?
•What game state is the best to gain an advantage over your opponent? Does a Pokemon that excels earlier in the game give more of an advantage over something that excels later in the game? Why?
•What purpose does a Pokemon hold in the other positions that it doesn't excel in? What level of flexibility is found in the current metagame?
•How do teams utilize a Pokemon that excels in a particular game state?
•How do Pokemon that specialize in particular game states actually accomplish their jobs even when faced with potential counterplay?
Parry and Riposte
Name: Parry and Riposte
Description: This Pokemon is able to "parry" and/or "riposte" (counter-attack) an opponent's actions with a well-timed action from the user. This parry and riposte may be done passively from the Pokemon's inherent features like its ability, or more actively accomplished through the use of specific moves, or both.
Justification: With the trending toward a more offensively oriented metagame compared to the previous generation, it is important to consider in what ways can players mitigate said offensive threats. In that regard, this is primarily an
Actualization concept that aims to explore the ways in which a Pokemon can improve the user's positioning in a battle through carefully timed and executed play.
Questions To Be Answered:
- How are Pokemon able to "parry" and "riposte" foes with the present gameplay mechanics?
- Furthermore, what actions can a player make that would be considered to fall under the umbrella of "parrying" and "riposting"?
- Does parrying and counter-attacking have to be inherently offensive, or can there be defensive parries as well?
- To what extent does the idea / threat of a pokemon's potential to parry and riposte impact each player's gameplay throughout a match?
- Under what circumstances would we expect this Pokemon to be able to attempt a "parry", i.e. when in a match is it most advantageous to try to and parry your opponent??
- To what extent should misplaying a parry punish the user?
- What would a punishment for incorrectly attempting or executing a "parry" look like?
- Should a "parrying" Pokemon be able to parry and riposte itself?
- How does Terastalization provide opportunities for "parrying" in a match?
- To what extent should the user be left "open" to Pokemon it previously checked or countered specifically after "parrying" with Terastalization?
No Shuckles Given
Name: No Shuckles Given
Description: This Pokemon would be built with minimal to no focus on its offensive capabilities.
Justification: CAP often prioritizes offense above all other defining features. This is so prevalent that we tend to build with one of two distinct stat chassis: fast, semi-frail offensive mon or fatter balance mon. Both chassis rely on swinging hard in conjunction with their other defining characteristics. This concept aims to abandon this safety net and explore what it means to build a mon that cannot meaningfully rely on raw offensive potential.
Questions To Be Answered:
- What other ways can a Pokemon make progress in a match that do not rely on its own offensive potential? How does typing, ability, stats, moves, and item selection synergize with each other to make non-offensive progress?
- This type of build historically tries to make progress by enabling more offensive teammates throughout the game. How could this type of mon make progress for itself and, potentially, create non-offensive win conditions?
- What mons already occupy this less-offensive archetype? What roles are these mons able to fill for teams, and how can we use this to inform our design choices?
- Even less-offensive Pokemon want the ability to click an immediate, damage-dealing move: Clefable w/ Moonblast, Ferrothorn w/ Power Whip/Gyro Ball/Body Press, or Chansey w/ Seismic Toss. Would this CAP also want an option to immediately force damage despite wanting to put minimal focus on offensive capabilities?
Catch-22
Name - Catch-22
Description - This Pokemon forces opponents to make sacrifices or enter disadvantageous game states in order to make progress against it.
Justification-
Catch-22s as I defined them here are very common situations in battle. Clicking Close Combat into a Rocky Helmet user forces you to sacrifice health. Hitting Bellibolt powers up its next electric move (a disadvantageous battle state). Baxcalibur might force you to sack a mon to bring in a revenge killer safely. Dragapult might force in scarfers or Booster Energy Pokemon, locking them into a move or using up their Booster Energy early (again a disadvantageous state that can be taken advantage of by teammates). In short, actions have consequences, sometimes even when they're the right choice. This concept is centered around being in the driver’s seat in as many of these interactions as possible. It’s a Pokemon that is designed around forcing risk/reward calculations, sacrifices, and/or self-advantageous positioning which allows us to take a deeper look at gameplay itself and everything that goes into a given turn. Every stage can play into the concept in concrete ways like contact punishing or a high speed stat drawing in scarfers, or more abstract ways like the threat level we exhibit, the interplay between moves, the ways we can allow teammates to capitalize on opponents who have overstepped, etc.
Questions To Be Answered -
- Since sacrifice, risk, and reward are such a fundamental part of almost every interaction, how can we allow ourselves to be in the driver’s seat in these exchanges?
- In-battle sacrifices as I've defined them above are often mutual to some degree between you and your opponent– there is loss on both sides. If your full-health Ferrothorn dies to Close Combat but gets Iron Barbs damage off, that's rarely a worthwhile trade. What constitutes a successful sacrifice on your part? Is having more control than your opponent enough to stack the odds in your favor?
- How can we turn our own weaknesses into potential strengths, or allow our teammates to take advantage of potential counterplay?
- How can you take advantage of your own Pokemon taking damage or even fainting? Can we design a Pokemon where this is often a beneficial trade, even outside of roles like suicide lead?
- Can a Pokemon that forces sacrifice or risk from its opponent be low-risk itself? What does that look like?
- Some concrete ways of achieving this concept are inherently reactive rather than proactive. How can we achieve consistency while taking these routes?
- If we choose a team support-oriented route centered on baiting in opponents, can we be useful throughout a match regardless of a successful bait?
Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal
Name: Good artists copy, great artists steal
Description: A pokemon that revisits old existing concepts and takes a more modern spin on it while going a completely different route with its execution than we did previously. Creating a distinctly different CAP functionally while still being notably similar through concept. (Think Convergent Species esque)
Justification: It's no secret to any CAP player that as time goes on, older-generation CAPs tend to lose touch with their initial concept. Whether that be buffs / nerfs needing to make them fit better in the current generation's metagame or the execution of the concept being products of their time, it's safe to say that sometimes no amount of reworking can save a CAP conceptually. Since we are soon going to be in DLC 1 of gen9, revisiting one of these more ancient concepts and executing it completely differently than we previously did while adapting it to work within generation 9 seems like a particularly fun prospect at this point in time as we have some sort of idea what works now. With the generation now having some time to marinate, I find taking a more broad concept like this more appealing than the very particular ones as we are going to be solving a new metagame soon.
Some examples of potential exploration might include;
-With the modern CAP framework avoiding custom abilities and moves, what would Colossoil's concept look like now? In the modern meta colo has kind of strayed away from its initial intention and is more of a bulky pivot that provides hazard removal, however, it faces a lot of competition currently as hazard removal and is easily overwhelmed due to its typing and general lack of longevity.
-Tomohawk was a CAP specifically designed as a response to the BWOU metagame, as such its role has gradually strayed away from its initial concept since generation 5 alongside a gradually drop in viability. How might a CAP with Tomo's concept look now? How can we make a CAP with the same concept that is more generalized than Tomos initial creation?
-Kitsunoh was created in a metagame that lacked team preview, how might a pokemon of a similar concept look now? The lack of team preview was an important aspect of Kitsunoh's creation and people of the time couldn't have predicted team previews addition and its impact on how we play the game.
-Malacondas concept in today's metagame would likely end up wayyy different than its previous execution due to the addition of the fairy typing, type chart changes and the power creep being higher than it was in gen5.
Questions To Be Answered:
-How can we adapt a concept designed for an older generation to fit within our current environment, while preserving its initial identity?
-What niches/roles are considered valuable in generation 9 CAP? What niches/roles are not? How would that influence which concept we choose to redo?
-How can we make CAP32 distinctively different than its predecessor?
-How would we react to particular core features removed from the games that otherwise existed during the previous CAPs concept creation?
-How would an older concept react to newer features? (abilities, moves, mechanics etc...)
-Should we target a more complex concept or a simpler one? An ancient concept or one that is more recent in history?
-Should we target a concept that is used by a CAP that has fallen out of favor or a concept used by a still viable CAP?
-Should we choose a "failed" concept or a concept that was historically successful? (Plasmanta vs Astrolotl)
-What past concepts should we consider unsalvagable? How should we determine which concepts are still viable in generation 9?
-Should we stick to one concept altogether or find concepts that are similar functionally and combine them?
Identity Crisis
Name: Identity Crisis
Description: At least one of this CAP’s four major design components (Typing, Ability, Stats, Moves) lies in stark contradiction to its primary role.
Justification: Trying to maximize synergy between each stage is CAP’s modus operandi, but we rarely explore the opposite: taking two elements that clash with each other, and building from there. This concept forces us to engage with a fundamentally different design philosophy than usual, shedding light on new and interesting possibilities for Pokemon design that may have never even been considered by our project, much less pursued.
Questions:
- How often do contradictory or anti-synergistic elements manifest in Pokemon designs? Which ways are the most common, and are some ways more successful than others? If so, what’s behind this success?
- Are some contradictions deeper or more interesting than others, and if so, which ones?
- Do certain roles tend to prefer specific anti-synergies?
- What are some Pokemon that embody this concept well in their respective metagames, and what can we learn from their design(s)?
- Why might (or might not) anti-synergy be something to actively pursue in this metagame? Are there certain niches or “holes” in the metagame that can only be filled by a pokemon with contradictory elements?
- Is anti-synergy inherently a bad thing, competitively speaking? What's the difference between working around these contradictions versus working with them? How can we be successful because of these contradictions, and not merely in spite of them?
- How might this concept affect the way the CAP process is structured? Would we need to make any adjustments to the order of stages? How should we go about choosing our intended role?
- How can we design a CAP with this concept in mind, such that it is still a coherent final product and not just a mess of disconnected design elements?
Once again, your options are:
Version 3.3
Very Fast Immovable Object
Position is Key
Parry and Riposte
No Shuckles Given
Catch-22
Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal
Identity Crisis
Please ensure your ballot uses the concept names listed above in bold and
not the usernames of the submitters. This vote will end in
24 hours, so please do not feel rushed, and instead ensure you make an informed decision!
This poll will be open for
24 hours.
