The main mistake I see growers here making is simply treating peppers like marijuana. Pepper plants are in no way photo sensitive and require no specific amount of hours to fruit. There is no "veg and bloom" with peppers. They veg and bloom simultaneously. This entire "veg and bloom" mentality has originated with marijuana growers and as someone who has years of experience growing both types of plants I can tell you, they are not the same. This goes for nutrient regimine as well. Pepper plants require an even NPK ratio throughout their growth cycle. Where as with photo period specific plants, the grower can tailor their feeding to those individual cycles.
Topping and fimming is a technique mj growers use to promote branching and, seemingly more tops. Buds. Smaller but more. I remember the first glog experiments with this from overgrow. Dierwolf and myself comparing different pruning and training techniques, it was all very enlightening. In the end pruning in the mj world is still disputed as to whether it increases yeild. I'm positive of the changes in plant structure but when all is said and done, weight on unpruned plants vs pruned at harvest come out about the same. Instead of one main top and four to five smaller ones, you get 20-30 smaller, longer buds...
Now with pepper plants, there are reasons to prune. But it's not the reason people have placed on the subject. The main reasons are for space issues, light issues, and time issues. If you have plants that are growing up into your indoor lights, or your lights aren't intense enough to ensure a dense canopy (leggy plants). In no way does removing a pepper plants pods ever create more pods. I know I'm gonna turn some growers heads with that statement, even some that are great growers and have made topics regarding the subject. It is, however, pretty simple. No photo period, no vegetative vs flowering, no pruning in hopes of changing yeild.