I've given this some thought recently, and I believe we've begun to drift from the topic at hand. The only item left to settle in this thread is whether CAP should be building for OU or the CAP Metagame, and, while there are good reasons for both positions, I am in favor of continuing to build for OU. From previous months of discussion, it's obvious that CAP needs to build for one single metagame. The OU metagame is infinitely more developed, popular, and accessible than the CAP metagame and is the only metagame out of the two that can sustain a project as large as CAP. The toxicity in our community is not particularly tied to "OU culture", and even if it was, switching to the CAP metagame will be at worst ineffective at abating that toxicity and at best a temporary fix.
I'm going to talk about project toxicity first. We've been operating under the premise that CAP is in a downward spiral and that the toxicity in our community is at an all-time high. I strongly disagree with that premise, and I ask veterans who have participated in the past four CAPs to reflect on how enjoyable each of those projects was. CAP 18 - Volkraken - had its fair share of toxicity, largely stemming from the results of the Concept Assessment thread. The outcome of that thread was widely panned, and although the ensuing discussions were an admirable effort to fulfill that Concept Assessment, the damage had been done. The poor beginning to CAP 18 allowed for prolonged and excessive venom to be directed towards project leaders and at the community at large. The toxicity worsened in CAP 19 (Plasmanta), which was by far the most off-putting and tense project of the generation. CAP 19 featured continuous clashes between project leadership and forum moderation, constant threats of leaving by top contributors (few of which actually happened, but that's beside the point), and culminated with the Retention Issues PR thread. Contrast CAPs 18 and 19 with 20 and 21. CAP 20, while not perfect, was much more fun to build than either of the two previous ones. There were issues of frustration over the Pokemon's power level and whining over the predictable nature of the concept, but all in all the environment surrounding CAP 20 was much more pleasant than that of 18 or 19. CAP 21 - Crucibelle - was one of the most fun Pokemon to build in ages. The discussions were vibrant and the IRC and Showdown community was more welcoming; it just felt like those who contributed to the toxicity of previous projects decided to give it a rest for CAP 21. In a way, I'm sad this thread has taken up so much time because I want to use CAP 21 as a springboard to an even more enjoyable CAP 22. The opinions in this paragraph are not gospel, they are merely my perception of how CAP has progressed over the generation. I know there are people out there who preferred building CAP 18 to CAP 20, or CAP 20 to CAP 21, or whatever. And I'm not here to comment on the competitive "success or failure" of previous projects because that's not what this thread is about. But all in all, the past three projects in particular demonstrate CAP is on a steep upward trend, not the downward spiral it's been made out to be.
Had the Concept Assessment in CAP 18 gone differently, there may have been less toxicity. Had the TL in CAP 19 been allowed to work with a concept they preferred, there may have been less toxicity. Even if there are a handful of users who can't let mistakes be made and prefer to stroke their own egos rather than propose solutions, this is not a symptom of "OU culture", it's a symptom of "competitive culture" that transcends metagames. It's the moderators' and IRC OPs' jobs to police this toxicity. To switch from the OU metagame to the CAP metagame because of a decline in culture is to admit that a handful of toxic users can hijack CAP as a whole and that the moderators are not competent enough to handle those users. Regardless, the toxicity our project has faced and continues to face cannot be tied to OU specifically, and there is no reason to believe that building for the CAP metagame would improve the forum and chat culture long-term. Doug brings up a point on this that I would like to rebut:
DougJustDoug said:
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.
While I agree that the OU players participating in CAP have a hang-up with project "success" and "failure", I do not believe that issue stems from OU or competitive players' presence in CAP. Plenty of CAP metagame players who participate in CAP share that obsession, and plenty of OU/competitive players in CAP see beyond "success" and failure". Although I'm not going to name names, I also believe the number of competitive players (who, let's be serious, play about as much OU as you or me nowadays) who actively cause project toxicity and propagate your two complaints can be counted on one hand. And even then, what makes you believe this same sort of toxicity won't appear in the CAP metagame if that's what we build for long-term? As we've decided earlier in this thread, CAP is about building for one metagame. That metagame will undoubtedly have tiering and balancing mechanisms that will invariably favor top players. Whether that metagame builds through "addition" or "subtraction" is irrelevant, as is whether it ends up being OU or CAP. The culture that comes from rigorous suspect testing and balancing is a necessary evil to create a metagame where projects like CAP can flourish. CAP is about learning from a metagame, and it makes more sense to study a balanced and competitive metagame instead of a shallow, unbalanced metagame. I think Bughouse's last post speaks for the majority of the competitive/OU players that participate in the CAP project, so I'm going to quote it here.
Bughouse said:
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.
The competitive players are the backbone of our project. They've put in thousands of man-hours into creating some of the best arguments, posts, and Pokemon this project has seen. To either force them to adapt to a metagame they don't play or blame them for causing poorly-defined "toxicity" is beyond insulting.
But these arguments about project toxicity only apply if you ignore the blindingly obvious fact that the CAP metagame is neither large nor developed enough to support the CAP project. OU had over two million battles in the past month and CAP had less than five thousand. In February, it took OU less than two hours to match the number of battles the CAP metagame saw in a month. There are dozens of times more analyses in the OU forums than in the fledgling CAP Analysis Workshop. OU hosts regular tournaments that force the top level of competition to continue adapting and analyzing metagame trends at a speed that the CAP metagame does not have. With all the whining about OU's suspect testing producing too volatile a metagame it's easy to forget that the CAP metagame is arguably less stable with its constant quarterly additions. At least with OU, there's an end goal: develop a metagame that does not have broken elements and then stop tweaking it. With CAP, there is a constant process of addition that will make it nearly impossible to create a metagame with OU's level of stability and balance. Furthermore, there are literally hundreds of OU participants for every CAP participant. Right now, it's easy for any OU player with a casual interest in CAP to jump in and contribute. If we switch to the CAP metagame, we restrict CAP participation to the CAP metagame's minuscule userbase and people that want to learn an entirely different metagame before participating.
Developing for the CAP metagame creates the greatest barrier to entry the CAP project has ever seen.
I'm not shitting on the CAP metagame. I love the CAP metagame, and I believe it's important for the CAP metagame to grow and develop possibly to the point where it could sustain the CAP project in the far future. I fully support keeping the CAP ladder open during the playtests. I'm thrilled the CAP Analysis workshop is as large as it is. I want to see regular CAP forum and Showdown tournaments. I want CAP metagame contributions to count towards the CAP Contributor badge. But the fact of the matter is that the CAP metagame is, right now, a moderately sized Other Metagame. It has less than 10% of the monthly battles as Balanced Hackmons. Gen 3 OU still sees more battles than CAP. Monotype sees fifty times as many monthly battles as CAP, and I doubt any of those metagames are developed enough to sustain a project as large and ambitious as CAP. The burden falls on the CAP metagame community to grow their metagame to a point where switching the CAP project from OU to CAP is feasible. Until then, there is no choice but to stay our course.
The choice is simple: either develop for the most accessible and developed metagame on Smogon or isolate ourselves from the rest of Smogon in order to spite some of our best contributors.