Bumping this thread because of a Reddit thread
DHR-107 sent me, and I figured it should be discussed
somewhere since the results are pretty interesting. And this thread appears to be the most on-topic place for it:
[Survey Results] Most/least used Pokémon across all the regions
Basically, the results of a survey. The creator asked people which Pokémon they had been using for their playthroughs throughout the ages, then gathered the results neatly and graphically
here. Further details in the linked post. If some of the graphs don't appear in the link, try force-refreshing the page.
Not surprisingly, the list is dominated by starters. Since people are handed one of the three at the beginning of the game and implicitly told to keep using it, it makes sense that they figure at the top of the rankings. Few people tend to ditch their starters, and if one falls in popularity, it just means the others are more popular. What's more interesting is the non-starter Pokémon people tend to favour.
It's a little too late in the evening for me to analyse every trend in the graphs, but I'd like to point you to the Sinnoh, BW2 and to a lesser extent Johto graphs. Notice how Staraptor, Luxray, and Lucario see higher usage than all the starters of their respective regions, and Ampharos is only beaten by Typhlosion (which turns out to be the most popular starter ever among respondents - two thirds of them have tried it out at least once). This means that people were more likely to have caught those Pokémon than used the most popular starter. They're such staples of a playthrough that they are likely make their ways to players' teams no matter which starter was picked.
Of course it helps that Shinx, Starly and Mareep are early-game Pokémon, but that's not the only answer. There are tons of early-game Pokémon around, after all. No, these ones are
good early-game Pokémon. They have a cute first stage, a final stage with... various degrees of badassery, and stats and movepools to pull their weight all the way into the Pokémon League. They can even learn useful HM moves. As such, they are extremely likely to secure themselves one of your six team slots.
...and actually, I'm not sure if that is good or bad design. It shows pretty poor diversity, after all. Early on is when you have the lowest opportunity cost when picking team mates. By the time you reach the first town and watch the catching tutorial, you are likely to seek out a team mate for your starter. There are five idle party slots gaping at you, and that handfull of free Poké Balls burns in your pocket. And if a good opportunity presents itself on Route 2, why not catch it?
However, if that good opportunity is such an obvious choice that fits on every team, your options become restricted somehow. It diminishes diversity. Starter, Starly, Shinx... that's half your team filled already, with Pokémon you're likely to stick with until the end credits roll. Then you have three slots available for the rest of the variety of the region. It might not be a bad thing for the players, but to the designers, this can't be a desirable outcome.
Then again, the game does intend you to catch Pokémon early on. I think most of us, when we play casually, fill a teamslot or two before we reach the first Gym. You're sort of meant to pick a couple of Pokémon from the early routes, and you're likely to stick with them too (unless one of those Pokémon is the Designated Early Bug, which is designed for obsolence after the first third of the game or so), mostly for psychological reasons. You're "intented" to pick Pokémon from the rather limited pool of early-game Pokémon anyway. And if people are holding back some team slots until later in the game, they are going to want to catch the best Pokémon they can from the early-game pool.
I think the problem, if any, is that Starly and Shinx are so much better/more attractive than the other options available at the time, that they end up being chosen every time. Or at least "alarmingly" often. And so you end up with more than two thirds of the players chosing to spend two of their team slots on the same two Pokémon families among ~200 different Pokémon families in the game. Two team slots out of how many is hard to say, considering replays. But considering that they're more popular than all the starters, it seems like players who play the game thrice to check out all starters, are more likely than not to use both Staraptor and Shinx more than once. The problem isn't their qualities in itself, it's the lack of comparable options at that point in the game.
So there's a bit of a dilemma there: Obvious Choice 'Mons are cool to use for players, but they hamper diversity. But if you keep good Pokémon out of the early routes, players may feel that all their options kind of suck, and enjoy the game less (I hit that feeling
hard later on in Sun/Moon, trying to fill out my final team slot near the end of Ula'Ula). If you put tons of good/great Pokémon in early, players might be likely to fill their teams up before the first Gym, in which case the rest of the game's Pokémon have a harder time fighting for attention (again, I think Sun and Moon fell a bit into this trap; it seems like most of the good options were available on MeleMele Island - perhaps the designers were counting on players having filled their team by the time they left Akala?).
Do you find anything interesting in those statistics? I'd comment more, but it's way past midnight over here. Perhaps tomorrow...
