They could have also just done the Ultra Necrozma route where the Terastal button on Baby Terapagos is replaced with a "transform into Terastal-form Terapagos" button and only then is Terapagos allowed to properly terastallize into Stellar Terapagos. It's even called "Terastal-form" they might as well have actually mechanically tied it to terastallization.
-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
-
Congrats to the winners of the 2023 Smog Awards!
Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
Gholdengo and Kingambit aren't OP people have always been overreacting imo
But that would lock it on Baby Terapagos in the next generations if Terastalization doesn't come back. While it's dumb what they have done, it's much better that the unaccessible form is the useless one. They could have given it any Hidden Ability so one could change it with an ability patch and use Baby Terapagos in battle.
Last edited:
This highlights a different point: Stop designing Pokemon specifically around the gimmick if you're going to stop carrying them forward and potentially gut major parts of their identity (Ultra Burst from Necrozma, most Galar Pokemon designed for Gigantamax forms, and now Terapagos with Terastal and Stellar forms). Duraludon and Hydrapple already show the weird approach they took by jut adding evolutions to Pokemon that, while underwhelming, were obviously not designed with them initially, and this approach isn't gonna be sustainable if they're going to do a Create-and-Drop pattern for Gimmicks every gen, even at just 1 or 2 Pokemon per.
It's more about how people talk about different gens.
You don't see people complain about Unova being linear and really forcing you down many story events, but you do for Alola. There is a cognitive dissonance or a conscious thought that there is no issue with Unova's linearity, but there is about Alola.
I've heard people try to reconcile this with "Unova has side routes", but you aren't even forced to go through like half of Melemele Island. It has a ton of side areas, side characters, side quests, especiailly in USUM.
Oh also, on the Double Battles talk: I think Double Battles is inherently the objectively superior battle mode for singleplayer, despite me vastly playing singles in competitive. Someone who has successfully nuzlocked Radical Red, Pokemon Reborn, etc., games that are 99% singles at some of the highest difficulty
This is mostly from a game designer perspective so allow me to nerd for a second; doesn't it strike most of you as odd that basically every more traditional JRPG (especially turn-based RPG) combat system has multiple members that can attack and be attacked in the same turn?
It's for a good reason, it's to make the game easier to balance and more complex/interesting at the same time. Because in Pokemon, if you can 1v1 the opposing Pokemon by clicking the same move twice, the game feels boring. You are just clicking the move that says super effective and winning.
You make that double, triple, etc. and you have more complex turns that demand the player's attention. Now they have an Abomasnow and a Blastoise, and if your Charizard just clicks Flamethrower, it will die. Maybe you are okay with that as you have a second Pokemon to defeat the Blastoise afterwards, but generally players see losing a Pokemon as inherently them being punished, and the game being harder.
Something I noticed when Legends Arceus was new was that people tended to find a Pokemon fainting to be more indictive of difficulty being present, with the battle system favoring trading back and forth so heavily. I think this is something I can trace within myself as well. Even if I win the battle, having even two Pokemon faint makes me feel like the battle was tougher, even if the strategy crafted was still fairly simple.
In a Singles scenario, you have your Cinderace click Flame Kick or whatever the fuck, the Abomasnow dies. The game prompts you to switch out of the incoming Blastoise, or if you are set you just see it come in. You switch out to your Grass-Type and win that, and cycle again.
Having more Pokemon be present on the field at the same time creates more visceral feelings as Pokemon are inherently harder to take down cleanly (ie. with none of your Pokemon sustaining major damage). Double targeting, having more strategies as the games are more and more balanced around them, and it's also easier to create difficult challenges.
As of right now the best they can do without forcing players to essentially make competitive teams is go "wow! that trainer had a focus sash! now you click ember again." But with Double Battles you can make compositions that are not hard for an average composition to defeat, while still having more complexity.
So, this begs the question, why is singles the standard?
Nerd out moment two: So, essentially, Pokemon combat at the earliest stages was fairly simple. It was going to be somewhat akin to an auto battler in complexity, and Game Freak experimented with ideas where you couldn't see the enemy HP and had to make a guess from dialogue or a sprite. They didn't want to do standard combat at all, and it wasn't.
As the games were made, how skills were made became more in line with what you'd expect, HP would be there, yadda-yadda. Originally, PVP was going to be cut from the games, as it was one of the last major features not in before ship date. Nintendo mandated it had to be there. They were going to make PVP more simple to make it easier to code, but ultimately just got it done in time (hence, desyncs, bugs, etc.)
So basically, Pokemon PVP being singles was not necessarily because it was the best idea, but more of a necessity. Besides, with Gameboy RAM displaying 4(or more) of those pretty big Pokemon sprites at the same time would have been very, very hard to do.
Obviously the other media at the time took after it, and singles, one-on-one combat became the norm and what people think of in Pokemon. Another reason I think it stuck is that one-on-one fights are simply more appealing to make people care about their critters more. When your Charizard wins? It's... your Charizard winning. There wasn't some second Pokemon next to it taking some of the spotlight, either.
In my opinion, a fully double battles mainline game would be great. Colo/XD are games I do not enjoy, but that is not because of the double battles nature, in fact I think it makes them more fun (outside of the slooow pacing, those animations are still slow as fuck)
Temtem has kinda gone down the shitter by its last update, but the 30 hours I played of it showed to me that singleplayer double battles can be fucking awesome. Pokemon just doing a slight hybrid sucks. Go all in or don't do it at all IMO, as others have said, the teambuilding gets wonky.
This is mostly from a game designer perspective so allow me to nerd for a second; doesn't it strike most of you as odd that basically every more traditional JRPG (especially turn-based RPG) combat system has multiple members that can attack and be attacked in the same turn?
It's for a good reason, it's to make the game easier to balance and more complex/interesting at the same time. Because in Pokemon, if you can 1v1 the opposing Pokemon by clicking the same move twice, the game feels boring. You are just clicking the move that says super effective and winning.
You make that double, triple, etc. and you have more complex turns that demand the player's attention. Now they have an Abomasnow and a Blastoise, and if your Charizard just clicks Flamethrower, it will die. Maybe you are okay with that as you have a second Pokemon to defeat the Blastoise afterwards, but generally players see losing a Pokemon as inherently them being punished, and the game being harder.
Something I noticed when Legends Arceus was new was that people tended to find a Pokemon fainting to be more indictive of difficulty being present, with the battle system favoring trading back and forth so heavily. I think this is something I can trace within myself as well. Even if I win the battle, having even two Pokemon faint makes me feel like the battle was tougher, even if the strategy crafted was still fairly simple.
In a Singles scenario, you have your Cinderace click Flame Kick or whatever the fuck, the Abomasnow dies. The game prompts you to switch out of the incoming Blastoise, or if you are set you just see it come in. You switch out to your Grass-Type and win that, and cycle again.
Having more Pokemon be present on the field at the same time creates more visceral feelings as Pokemon are inherently harder to take down cleanly (ie. with none of your Pokemon sustaining major damage). Double targeting, having more strategies as the games are more and more balanced around them, and it's also easier to create difficult challenges.
As of right now the best they can do without forcing players to essentially make competitive teams is go "wow! that trainer had a focus sash! now you click ember again." But with Double Battles you can make compositions that are not hard for an average composition to defeat, while still having more complexity.
So, this begs the question, why is singles the standard?
Nerd out moment two: So, essentially, Pokemon combat at the earliest stages was fairly simple. It was going to be somewhat akin to an auto battler in complexity, and Game Freak experimented with ideas where you couldn't see the enemy HP and had to make a guess from dialogue or a sprite. They didn't want to do standard combat at all, and it wasn't.
As the games were made, how skills were made became more in line with what you'd expect, HP would be there, yadda-yadda. Originally, PVP was going to be cut from the games, as it was one of the last major features not in before ship date. Nintendo mandated it had to be there. They were going to make PVP more simple to make it easier to code, but ultimately just got it done in time (hence, desyncs, bugs, etc.)
So basically, Pokemon PVP being singles was not necessarily because it was the best idea, but more of a necessity. Besides, with Gameboy RAM displaying 4(or more) of those pretty big Pokemon sprites at the same time would have been very, very hard to do.
Obviously the other media at the time took after it, and singles, one-on-one combat became the norm and what people think of in Pokemon. Another reason I think it stuck is that one-on-one fights are simply more appealing to make people care about their critters more. When your Charizard wins? It's... your Charizard winning. There wasn't some second Pokemon next to it taking some of the spotlight, either.
In my opinion, a fully double battles mainline game would be great. Colo/XD are games I do not enjoy, but that is not because of the double battles nature, in fact I think it makes them more fun (outside of the slooow pacing, those animations are still slow as fuck)
Temtem has kinda gone down the shitter by its last update, but the 30 hours I played of it showed to me that singleplayer double battles can be fucking awesome. Pokemon just doing a slight hybrid sucks. Go all in or don't do it at all IMO, as others have said, the teambuilding gets wonky.
Not to say that the Tera Shifting at the start of every battle isn’t clunky, but I really do think it’s probably just GF wanting to express the lore (in this case, “Terapagos protects itself in battle by creating a shell of multitype energy”) through the mechanics. I wouldn’t be surprised if “people might want to use Normal Form in battle” wasn’t something they really considered.
You mention Cosmog and Cosmoem being usable, and sure… they’re “usable,” but not because anybody wants them to be. If a desire for them to be playable was something that the devs were being conscientious about, they wouldn’t have given them purely lore-based movesets that render them literally worthless in battle.
Well, maybe not these days, but that was definitely something BW got criticized for a lot when they were new.
I don't think that a doubles maingame (with maingame difficulty) is going to be less of just spamming attacks. Nearly every mon in doubles PvP runs Protect to try to deal with being double-targeted, and the AI isn't able to have the prediction required to smartly use it (if it somehow managed, people would probably accuse the games of input reading). As well, we've already seen the games rely on raid mechanics when presenting a legendary encounter against multiple mons at once, and those mechanics frequently punish the player for trying anything clever. If every significant fight is a double battle, I would expect this to occur more frequently.
The Raid Mechanics/Legendaries aren't really comparable because the entire concept of Raids is an Asymmetrical battle between multiple against 1-super opponent. Doubles against trainers still theoretically plays by Pokemon's standard of symmetrical rules.
No one's asking for the Doubles battles to be significantly harder (outside some bosses at least), my complaint is there's not even a sandbox or punching bag where playing with the litany to Doubles-favored Pokemon can be tried out in main game or seeing interactions at work (i.e. "Hey, Intimidate switching made surviving this level gap a lot easier"). Just make a few trainers do basic stuff like "Discharge with a Lightning Rod partner" or "Ninetales + Solarbeam user". Leave any more complex Doubles stuff like Follow Me Set-up, full Weather themes, or Protect Usage to bosses.
Also, playing the Indigo Disk DLC, half my difficulty was just having to plan ahead for Pokemon existing in the back since "Shift" is not an option in Doubles. The amount of turns dedicatd to just switching into more useful match-ups makes Supports valuable for pivoting or disrupting the opponent during those non-attack turns.
Tangentially related to all this Doubles talk, I feel like Protect should have gotten its PP cut like most recovery moves did in SV. Doubles matches are fast-paced and I don't see the reduced PP mattering there, where it's probably the most balanced.
Heck, Detect had 5 PP in its introduction in Gen 2. Still not sure why they made an objectively worse version of Protect the same generation they introduced it, but maybe they had some other intentions for it and changed it in development.
Heck, Detect had 5 PP in its introduction in Gen 2. Still not sure why they made an objectively worse version of Protect the same generation they introduced it, but maybe they had some other intentions for it and changed it in development.
Detect actually has usefulness in VGC (which is a Doubles metagame) because the fact that it's a separate move from Protect despite having an identical effect allows it to bypass Imprison from most users of that move.
One of the ways VGC players try to block Protect is to use an Imprison+Protect user to block other users from using the move, but for any Pokemon that has Detect, they always will run that over Protect precisely because they can avoid having Imprison users disable it.
Flavor wise they probably felt it was a cool move to have at the time they made it. The flavor difference is Detect involves the user rapidly anticipating their opponent's move and dodging reflexively to avoid it, while Protect involves the user conjuring up a shield of energy to literally block the attack.
In Singles, Detect has no use over Protect, but in Doubles where Protect is everywhere, Detect actually becomes useful as a variant that takes advantage of a loophole around a popular strategy used to shut down Protect. Even if not necessarily intentional, Detect actually did become surprisingly useful in an official competitive environment.
I THINK the idea in Gen 2 at least was Detect was given to more offensively oriented Pokemon who thus wouldn't be able to/try to protect themselves for as much of the fight, hence the lesser PP. Examples include Hitmonchan, Hitmontop, and Zapdos as the natural Learners (TMs are always weird territory when talking flavor), while Protect's Level up users in Gen 2 are Defensive/Bulky looking Pokemon like the lines for Squirtle, Shellder, and Pineco. It carries forward to Gen 3 on that front with Detect going to stuff like Sceptile, Medicham, and Zangoose while Protect was on the Bulkier Swampert, Pelipper, Aggron, etc.
It's down to the flavor mentioned on the reply preceding mine, since Detect is basically perfect dodging everything (explaining users like Yanma and Sableye which have bad defenses but logically quick reflexes/detection skills with their eyes and the former being an insect) while Protect is essentially full bracing and blocking for the Walls. This probably also plays into the PP difference since your ability to react and dodge everything would wear out/dull faster than your durability to be hit by and block attacks.
This is an interesting point I hadn't thought about, since I always reject the option to switch out after a KO on principle (curse you Game Freak for removing Set mode!!). Shift mode is the biggest outlier in what is otherwise a very symmetrical battle system, so it seems pretty short-sighted to force players into using this crutch, only to yank it away for a Doubles-focused DLC. The same issue was present in earlier games with battle facilities, since iirc Shift was always the default, but story content (even in a DLC) feels different from something that's meant purely as a postgame challenge.
Yeah this is spot on. Pokemon players have been trained by the games' low difficulty and especially by Shift mode to expect to win almost every battle without any of their Pokemon fainting, so when a Pokemon does faint (as is common in a battle system like PLA's) it's seen as a sign of a real challenge, even when there isn't really any extra tactical complexity.
I think GF might be worried that if they bump up the baseline difficulty to a point where trading KOs is more common, then they run the risk of having battles feel like they're more about luck or guesswork, i.e. the player has to hope that their last couple of Pokemon don't match up poorly against the opponent's last mons. In general, Pokemon's battle system doesn't leave much room for players to adapt mid-battle, so if they're in a losing position there's not much they can do (besides spam healing items I guess).
Remember when in Legend Arceus people specifically complained of how battles are just pokemon alternating KOing each other?..
Yes? 'Trading KOs' is an inelegant way of putting it, but I don't mean something as extreme as the PLA system. A Pokemon fainting on one side should, generally, give its trainer the opportunity to wrest back momentum and have a better chance of scoring the next KO (which is why Shift mode undermines the whole battle system and should only be a toggle-able accessibility feature, rather than the default/only option).
I probably deserve to get swept if I let the opponent set up for 5 turns or whatever, but the risk/reward of setup moves and items is mostly gone at this point, particularly in the mainline games' PvE single battles. Setup options, in conjunction with the general power creep of moves/abilities/new species, are just way too strong, so the tendency is towards snowballing rather than chess-like trades. This is extremely boring (imo moreso than PLA battles were). It's not fun to realise that the optimum way to approach every major in-game battle is to have a dedicated debuff mon that softens up the opponent's lead so your setup mon can come in for an easy sweep. Programming an extremely proactive AI could maybe stop this, but it'd come with its own exploitable patterns (and wouldn't stop the true best strategy: X item spam on a single overlevelled Pokemon).
I don't really trust GF to overhaul the battle system in a way that I can find engaging without having to deliberately handicap myself, so switching the focus to double battles is the next best thing, improving most of the problems I have with Pokemon battles without requiring any actual effort.
I am really excited for Gen 10, and I still have confidence that Game Freak is cooking in terms of core mechanics. Things like the sync in the SV DLC reminds me of Crown Tundra being a test.
Crown Tundra gives you three main stories to follow and you can progress them in any order in an open world. Sound familiar?
Crown Tundra gives you three main stories to follow and you can progress them in any order in an open world. Sound familiar?
my most radical unpopular opinion when it comes to mainline pokemon games is the normalization of using NFEs.
It came to me when I was playing leafgreen a couple years ago, and tried out the bellsprout line for the first time. Around the 4th gym, I had acquired a leaf stone and was gonna evolve Taco, my Weepinbell. It had become the unofficial mascot of the team, and it was a bittersweet moment until it hit me
Why should I evolve weepinbell if I like it better than victreebel? Is the game so hard as to necessitate the extra stat buff? And so i sold my leaf stone, and carried on with my beloved Taco. While the rest of my team evolved, my favorite doofus remained as goofy as ever.
And when the time came I rolled up vs champion SHID and he sent out his ace, the level 63 Blastoise, Taco was waiting. And Taco feasted. It's been years and I still cherish it. I can comfortably say that him being a Weepinbell made it much more memorable.
I bring this up because I'm playing Firered again and have a new favorite party member.
Babby, destroyer of worlds. She's had the chance to evolve four times, and she'll have many more as the journey goes. Does not matter. Babby is babby. Pressing b a bunch of times is a small price to pay for keeping her story intact. And I cannot wait for her eventual rise to become champion.
Did we learn nothing from Ash and Pikachu? Are we so enslaved to numbers and optimization that we are hard coded to deny the chance for a better story? Pokemon is a game fueled by narrative. BREAK THE CHAINS OF EVOLUTION!
TLDR; keep your scrimblos scrimbly and enjoy your playthrough to the fullest
It came to me when I was playing leafgreen a couple years ago, and tried out the bellsprout line for the first time. Around the 4th gym, I had acquired a leaf stone and was gonna evolve Taco, my Weepinbell. It had become the unofficial mascot of the team, and it was a bittersweet moment until it hit me
Why should I evolve weepinbell if I like it better than victreebel? Is the game so hard as to necessitate the extra stat buff? And so i sold my leaf stone, and carried on with my beloved Taco. While the rest of my team evolved, my favorite doofus remained as goofy as ever.
And when the time came I rolled up vs champion SHID and he sent out his ace, the level 63 Blastoise, Taco was waiting. And Taco feasted. It's been years and I still cherish it. I can comfortably say that him being a Weepinbell made it much more memorable.
I bring this up because I'm playing Firered again and have a new favorite party member.
Babby, destroyer of worlds. She's had the chance to evolve four times, and she'll have many more as the journey goes. Does not matter. Babby is babby. Pressing b a bunch of times is a small price to pay for keeping her story intact. And I cannot wait for her eventual rise to become champion.
Did we learn nothing from Ash and Pikachu? Are we so enslaved to numbers and optimization that we are hard coded to deny the chance for a better story? Pokemon is a game fueled by narrative. BREAK THE CHAINS OF EVOLUTION!
TLDR; keep your scrimblos scrimbly and enjoy your playthrough to the fullest
Last edited:
That's what Eviolite was for. Not for making Chansey better than Blissey, but to have little Hiroshi emulate Ash and keep his Oshawott unevolved through Unova.
Anyway: Pursuit trapping was not a healthy way to deal with the ghost type. Move shouldn't be a Crunch to retreating 'mons.
Anyway: Pursuit trapping was not a healthy way to deal with the ghost type. Move shouldn't be a Crunch to retreating 'mons.
i do agree the ghost type is in sore need of balancing BUT i think pursuit added a lot to competitive beyond that and it shouldn't have been dexited
QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
How?
Is that really unpopular, I am quite sure noone likes not, nor on smogon nor on VGC. GF also seems to have more or less aknowledged it as they have not created new reliable trapping methods on non-mythicals since gen 7 iirc
Trapping is reasonable as a competitive element in inverse proportion to how much/how easily it traps things. For the following I will exclude Ghosts due to being untrappable by nature, and Pursuit I consider more of a toss-up reaction since it has weird interactions like having to act later against Pivoting moves, and doesn't remove the option to switch so much as add a risk to that choice vs acting on the field.
Trapping moves require a turn to work so they rely on Prediction since they come out a turn later, so they don't tend to grab a winning match-up much harder. Magnet Pull is specific to a type that Magnezone/A-Golem/Probopass may or may not be safe against the individual users of since Steels with Ground/Fighting/etc. Coverage aren't unicorns. Arena Trap is when you see contentions about fairness because you trap almost everything outside of the "not grounded" Category, which in turn frequently have their own shared weaknesses such as Flying Types with a SR weakness, and it all culminates with Shadow Tag which is literally "you cannot leave until I do".
Trapping moves require a turn to work so they rely on Prediction since they come out a turn later, so they don't tend to grab a winning match-up much harder. Magnet Pull is specific to a type that Magnezone/A-Golem/Probopass may or may not be safe against the individual users of since Steels with Ground/Fighting/etc. Coverage aren't unicorns. Arena Trap is when you see contentions about fairness because you trap almost everything outside of the "not grounded" Category, which in turn frequently have their own shared weaknesses such as Flying Types with a SR weakness, and it all culminates with Shadow Tag which is literally "you cannot leave until I do".
I don't agree. I believe that switching is a core tenant of Pokemon, and being punished with what is essentially a free kill if the player switches in at the correct time, one single time, without the opportunity for the other core tenant to me (teambuilding) to support your Pokemon, is broken.
To me, the entire point of 6v6 singles as a competitive game is that you make your team, and you switch around it with strategy in order to wiggle out of weaknesses. The Magnet Pull dynamic to me is just matchup fishing + removes too much control from the other player. If one Pokemon gets a kill, it just dies. If it switches in on the turn the opponent switches in the Magnet Pull Pokemon, it just dies. If the opponent uses U-Turn on that Pokemon being swapped in, it just dies.
Of course, this isn't to say "any scenario where you have to sack is uncompetitive", it's that these are conditions that are too easy to pull off. Usually you get into that position around midgame where you make dents, knock off items, use hazards and status to put your opponent into a condition where they must start cutting their losses. Magnet Pull just puts you, by Turn 1, into a condition where it is essentially a 5v6 game. The moment your Steel-Type does anything that does not involve using U-Turn on the Magnet Pull Pokemon coming in, or killing the Magnet Pull Pokemon, it is dead.
I think that is a bad thing for the game. Magma Storm is much more common so I will use for attacking trapping movesfor why I think it's bad for the game: Simply put it's the same concept. A team will not have several switch ins to the same type (if it is good) generally, and thus an attacking move that traps can put you into a Catch 22. There was a long time (and some still do, IIRC) in SWSH where Toxapex was essentially required to run Shed Tail. The other Fire resists are going to get weakened (say, Dragapult, frail but resists Fire), and Toxapex is often the dedicated pivot, especially for Fire moves. Without Shed Tail, this turns it into a 100-0 matchup, which also therefore makes Heatran much more powerful for the rest of the game.
Simply by being able to prevent the opponent to switch out, you can do absurd shit by just counting and waiting out the chip damage.
Conditional trapping is still bad for the game IMO. Having the certainty that the opponent cannot switch out makes for very bad interactions and makes Pokemon much more powerful than they should be (should, as in, deserving to on outside factors).
Matchup fishing, disgusting sets, gross gameplay.