Unpopular opinions

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

This is a very valid point, so why do people keep insisting on Gamefreak having a longer development time when it comes to Pokemon games?

1- Very poor performance (bad draw distance, bad FPS, bad textures)

2- Games seem unfinished (menus instead of models for stores, towns with nothing to do in them, towns that are a fucking long corridor)

Uhhh, yeah. These are pretty good reasons why people want GF to have more development time.

We know that GF has been hiring more people, so it's not manpower. It's kind of unbelievable that they're only hiring grunts who can't code anything but fine Italian spaghetti, so we can count out skill issues for the most part.

And then there's the elephant in the room.

Cut/barebones content and poor optimization are more often than not related to time constraints and short dev cycles. Pokémon is the poster child for both.

It's clear that the developers of Diamond & Pearl did exactly what fans want the developers of the newer games to do nowadays. So in that case... why do Diamond & Pearl still suck?

Because one year wasn't enough.

DP was a MASSIVE leap from Emerald in a lot of ways, including the leap to 3D. Yes, I'm aware it's mixed with sprites, but it still counts. DP, to put it bluntly, had more than its fair share of issues, which explains why even this franchise was willing to hold out for another year because the result at the time was likely unplayable.

Ironically, there's more to this story than meets the eye...

The common consensus opinion seems to be that the developers, usually Game Freak but also ILCA since the release of Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl,

BDSP is NOT an example of a game that needed more time in the oven.

It may look like it because everyone got their hands on 1.0.0 and noticed things like the soundtrack being midi placeholders, the lack of an intro, and chunks of the game missing.

But 1.0.0 was never supposed to be the final product. The final product is what we got after the Day 1 patch, which, as the name implies, was ready on Day 1.

BDSP runs perfectly on a Switch. It doesn't suffer from performance issues like say, SV.

The issues with BDSP are completely different. They're direction issues. That game is a mire of bad decisions.

Forced Exp. All in a game that's obviously not designed around it, ignoring all of Platinum's fixes, Affection not having a soft cap...

These are bone-headed decisions, straight up. This is not a team not having the time to optimize a game, it works perfectly. It just shouldn't have been designed that way.

The decisions taken when it comes to many things in that game are just baffling, that is the kind of thing that more time doesn't fix.

The technical issues from DP were fixed. No more "saving a lot of data", slow engine, and poor AI implementation. BDSP's issues lie at a conceptual level because Masuda wanted a faithful-to-a-fault remake. This is why, barring the Frontier and some details, modders recreated Platinum out of it in a matter of weeks.

 

[Yung Dramps]

BDSP's issues lie at a conceptual level because Masuda wanted a faithful-to-a-fault remake

Again, I must ask: But did he really? Even for a remake, 1.5 year production cycle for a console jrpg is lol lol lmao lol lol. I guarantee you, I absolutely bet my life on it that if BDSP had another year it would've been a Platinum remake. The only reason why it's in this state is because, say it with me now, it's all they had time to do! This was a development cycle in a state so dire that they needed to patch in the completed music. Even in an era where a lot of people complain about overly bloated day 1 patches and devs banking on "release now, finish later" mentalities, this is not REMOTELY normal. They didn't omit the Battle Frontier, Distortion World etc because of executive mandates, they omitted these things because if they tried to jam them in under the circumstances there would've been hospitalizations of staff.

 

[AztecCroc]

Again, I must ask: But did he really? Even for a remake, 1.5 year production cycle for a console jrpg is lol lol lmao lol lol. I guarantee you, I absolutely bet my life on it that if BDSP had another year it would've been a Platinum remake. The only reason why it's in this state is because, say it with me now, it's all they had time to do! This was a development cycle in a state so dire that they needed to patch in the completed music. Even in an era where a lot of people complain about overly bloated day 1 patches and devs banking on "release now, finish later" mentalities, this is not REMOTELY normal. They didn't omit the Battle Frontier, Distortion World etc because of executive mandates, they omitted these things because if they tried to jam them in under the circumstances there would've been hospitalizations of staff.

No, no it wouldn't. It was always going to be Diamond and Pearl, not Platinum. No matter how much time it got, even if they put every Pokémon in, they were never going to make it Platinum.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

Again, I must ask: But did he really? Even for a remake, 1.5 year production cycle for a console jrpg is lol lol lmao lol lol. I guarantee you, I absolutely bet my life on it that if BDSP had another year it would've been a Platinum remake.

It takes the exact same time to program the Safari Zone to have a Yanma or a Bidoof.

The plan has always been DP.

 

[Kin+ak (✧∇✧)]

My unpopular opinion is that The anime is GREAT. we're not that much on pokemon battles But if Showdown made me realize sth, it's that pokemon battles Really are not what makes pokemon great -and the series are ways more on the adventure with pokemon rather than adventure By pokemon aspect of the franchise. So I think it is great, the opening, While not mythical, is 9232793772823782 times better, is more anime-like in general. I find the change of style great

 

[ant4456]

RBY OU should be played on Stadium

PVP on Gen 1 cart was a late addition and the fact that several clauses are on Stadium + it fixes desyncs means that Stadium is literally the objectively better game to base competitive Gen 1 on

Get over Hyper Beam lmao

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

Get over Hyper Beam lmao

Never!

 

[Sonikku A]

Forces everyone to do Stadium Rentals comp instead

 

[CPU]

RBY OU should be played on Stadium

PVP on Gen 1 cart was a late addition and the fact that several clauses are on Stadium + it fixes desyncs means that Stadium is literally the objectively better game to base competitive Gen 1 on

Get over Hyper Beam lmao

Stadium has quirks of its own that the base games do not (Stadium 2 for Gen 2 as well).

Hyper Beam worked better with what it was in Gen 1 because of a general lack of boosting moves/options and the higher bulk relative to modern Pokémon courtesy of stat EXP.

 

[ant4456]

Stadium has quirks of its own that the base games do not (Stadium 2 for Gen 2 as well).

RBY has its own quirks such as "PVP being added as a late addition at the behest of the publishers, whomst pressured Game Freak to make PvP work at the end of development, making it extremely rushed"

Half of Stadium's job was to make a game that could actually be reliably used for competitive tournaments at the time, because RBY sure as shit was not. Stadium 2 we can forego because Gen 2 itself is just actually fairly stable, but Gen 1 RBY OU is literally basically modded RBY OU

 

[CPU]

RBY has its own quirks such as "PVP being added as a late addition at the behest of the publishers, whomst pressured Game Freak to make PvP work at the end of development, making it extremely rushed"

Half of Stadium's job was to make a game that could actually be reliably used for competitive tournaments at the time, because RBY sure as shit was not. Stadium 2 we can forego because Gen 2 itself is just actually fairly stable, but Gen 1 RBY OU is literally basically modded RBY OU

I don't think Gen 1 PvP actually has all that many modded concessions, and most of them outside of Sleep Clause (which is a Stadium addition) really just exist to solve programming errors. Offhand:

• Psywave Desync Clause (this one genuinely feels like a omission on GF's part, though it's in line with Gen 1's 1/256 misses)
• Counter Desync Clause (a result of the FIGHT button, and errors involving it are probably a result of late PvP additions, since I'm not specifically aware of uneven data communication being an issue in later Gens)
• Sleep Clause (an understandable inclusion, given how powerful Gen 1 Sleep is, though Stadium using it is probably more because most of its formats use 3v3 and not full 6v6)
• Freeze Clause (see Sleep Clause)
• Whatever-clause-assumes-both-trainers-fully-healed-their-teams-before-joining-a-link-battle (IDK if this even counts as a mod but I'm including it anyway)

I'm sure I'm forgetting some (feel free to remind me), but I am not forgetting:

• Perfect DV mod, as it doesn't impact gameplay mechanics, and is theoretically obtainable with tradebacks in most cases anyway. One of the cases where tradebacks don't apply (Mewtwo) does have gameplay repercussions, but the gameplay effects aren't changed by the mod... just how accessible they are. It's more of a legality mod than a gameplay mod.
• HP percentage mod, since literally every tier uses this too, and it's unfair to single out Gen 1.

I don't remember what all Stadium changed. I know crit rates are adjusted (but still based on Speed), Sleep turn duration was reduced (again, potentially changed because of 3v3), 1/256 misses were addressed (...meaning they just run the accuracy check again and actually can fail the second time, making it a 1/65536 miss chance), Substitute was made to be closer to later gens, partial trapping moves function a little differently on a switch (IIRC, anyway), and Hyper Beam.. okay, now I forget if it never skips the recharge turn, or if it still incurs recharging on a miss (it was changed from cartridge, though). I don't remember if other quirks like stat recalculation involving Burn/Paralysis, Leech Seed/Toxic incrementing each other, Toxic Poison becoming regular Poison if the Pokémon switches out, the 256/512 healing oddity, Stat boosting rollover, or others were addressed.

Basically, from what I know, while Gen 1 Showdown gameplay is undeniably modded, the community is largely dedicated to keeping the gameplay true to all of Game Freak's strange coding decisions and poor coding oversights, including their impacts on gameplay. Mods for specific moves really only exist when the issues involving said moves can cause the games to desync. Stadium is definitely a more stable gameplay experience, but it also removes a little of the nonsense that gives Gen 1 competitive its charm.

If anyone asks why I don't do research before making posts like these, it's probably because I'm responding on mobile and I am replying in the moment and don't feel like taking the time to research because I don't feel like specific examples would make my point any better.

 

[doipy hooves]

I'm sure I'm forgetting some (feel free to remind me), but I am not forgetting:

Perfect DV mod, as it doesn't impact gameplay mechanics, and is theoretically obtainable with tradebacks in most cases anyway. One of the cases where tradebacks don't apply (Mewtwo) does have gameplay repercussions, but the gameplay effects aren't changed by the mod... just how accessible they are. It's more of a legality mod than a gameplay mod.

Relevant Policy Review thread going on now: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...ad-about-rby-cart-accuracy-vs-modding.3739684

Static encounters including Mewtwo aren't affected by the DV limitation because it's just based on how wild encounters are generated after an encounter rate roll.

 

[CPU]

Relevant Policy Review thread going on now: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...ad-about-rby-cart-accuracy-vs-modding.3739684

Static encounters including Mewtwo aren't affected by the DV limitation because it's just based on how wild encounters are generated after an encounter rate roll.

Yeah I did glance at the policy review thread, it's pretty interesting. I actually didn't know that the uneven way link battles handle information from each player' FIGHT command had multiple impacts on the battle until like, last week lol. I think it was Reverend's video on Counter that introduced me to it, showing that I don't play the Gen but I do like learning about its mechanics and bits about its metagames.

 

[Bakugames]

gen 1 ou is funny as hell. thats not an unpopular opinion sorry but the fact theres programming patches for it because of how insanely bad the pvp code is amuses me

its a bit wild how smogon players prefer old gens being frozen though. The whole rby tradebacks ban feels silly, if you can do it you should do it etc, even if its not the game you used to play or something. I dont remember this being a common thought process for other competitive games, but I could just have a limited view LOL

 

[Sonikku A]

Y'know, it gets me how with Pokemon comp, the meta back then wasn't so adapting to change

Like it was only recently people realized Normal types weren't affected by Body Slam paralysis. Most of meta picks were set in stone for over a decade that point
But then man. Now we have a lot of changes. We went from "Moltres is the worst bird" to "Moltres does very well in RBYOU actually" after people started to experiment more

Gen 3 OU similarly is experimenting more these days, and then Gen 4 we had Clefable reinspected for being a bulky status immune mon after its Gen 6/7 success

It's a nice thing, to see people break out from stereotypical picks and find use that's more than just niche

 

[Sixfortyfive]

its a bit wild how smogon players prefer old gens being frozen though. The whole rby tradebacks ban feels silly, if you can do it you should do it etc, even if its not the game you used to play or something. I dont remember this being a common thought process for other competitive games, but I could just have a limited view LOL

I used to see this semi-frequently in classic fighting games. In the late '90s, Capcom would occasionally put out an updated version of one of their titles in the arcades, but the community would sometimes stick with an older version of it for one reason or another anyway. Like, the Street Fighter Alpha 3 playerbase largely stayed on the original CPS2 release even though the Naomi re-release added a ton of then-console-exclusive characters to it and fixed a bunch of infinite combos. Alpha 2 was also largely preferred over Alpha 2 Gold for reasons that I've entirely forgotten at this point. The Street Fighter III community also stayed on CPS3 instead of migrating to the later Naomi release. There were a lot of little reasons for this. Sometimes some of the specific changes were arguably a step back for one reason or another, but I think chief among them was that the updated versions of these games weren't as widely available worldwide as they were in Japan, so people largely just preferred to stick with what they were familiar with and what they had already invested practice time into.

That sort of mindset isn't so common in the genre today, but it's still heavily embedded into Smash Bros. The Smash Ultimate devs actually put in a decent amount of work into making the Stamina mode viable (e.g. some fixes to what had previously been fundamentally broken combo set-ups in a format that didn't use the standard percentage-based scaling knockback), as well as adding a traditional super meter mechanic into the game as an alternative to the standard Final Smash mechanic so that all of the ultimate attacks could still be utilized in some manner even when items were disabled. The game even heavily features both of these things in its various single-player modes, as if the devs wanted to make sure that the players at least tried them out. Does the competitive Smash community utilize either of them at all, even in smaller alternative-rules side brackets? Nope. They just play Smash with largely the same house rules they always have, with only the slightest tweaks from one game release to the next. (Disclaimer: I haven't been involved with Smash tournaments since 2020 and don't care to investigate whether any of this has changed since then.)

People just get set in their ways, and after enough time of being set in their ways, it takes a lot of inertia to get them to budge. To tie this back into unpopular opinions about Pokemon, this is the sort of stuff that got me to abandon Smogon OU for VGC back in Gen 4. Like around the time that Garchomp got put into Ubers, I sat back and thought about the game at a macro scale a little bit and came to the conclusion that some of the most significant gripes that the community had with the game's balance were at least partially a result of the rules that the community itself imposed onto the game. To give a simple example, Outrage and Stealth Rock were extremely powerful and centralizing in Singles... but they kind of sucked in Doubles. So, at least a few of the reasons that contributed to why Garchomp was so polarizing in OU (Outrage OP, Stealth Rock resistance) weren't factors at all in the "official" ruleset. So that gets the gears turning in my head, and I figure that: to any extent that Game Freak is putting any care into competitive decisions at all, that care is going into Doubles, so I'm just going to move on with my life and play Doubles rather than deal with any of these arguments about Singles.

I'm a pretty strong believer in the idea of "playing the game that you have, not the game that you wished you had." And if I don't like the game that I have, then I'd just rather move onto another game altogether than try to "fix" the current one myself, because the latter process just comes with a whole bunch of community politics and baggage that I loathe to interact with. Tons of agenda-setting for what "should" be part of the game, who gets to decide that, and how best to mask your personal taste as "objectivity." I don't want to play Debate Club. I want to play video games.

(This is not a value judgement on your favorite metagame. Especially you RBY heads. I think it's great that anyone out there is trying to keep classic scenes alive at all, especially when their default state is such a hilarious patchwork that barely functions out of the box. You guys do you.)

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

gen 1 ou is funny as hell. thats not an unpopular opinion sorry but the fact theres programming patches for it because of how insanely bad the pvp code is amuses me

its a bit wild how smogon players prefer old gens being frozen though. The whole rby tradebacks ban feels silly, if you can do it you should do it etc, even if its not the game you used to play or something. I dont remember this being a common thought process for other competitive games, but I could just have a limited view LOL

Tradeback RBY is wildly different enough to warrant its own meta.

I suppose it makes sense to have them be a time capsule of sorts because it reflects how things were at the time.

For example, Electivire being OU in Gen 4 because everyone wanted to make it work at the time. Would it be UU if it was updated for the current meta? Probably. But it's not accurate to what it was back then.

Ideally, gens should have a cutoff point and have a "Historic Tier" and "Current Tier" IMO.

I'm a pretty strong believer in the idea of "playing the game that you have, not the game that you wished you had."

VGC is low-key a horrible example of it tho. After all, most of the in-game campaign is Singles. It's the main reason why Smogon is so popular, VGC is the one that feels like crazy house rules.


As for my unpopular opinion of the day... Shiny hunting is a fool's errand.

No, it's not because of anything related to the process itself. Most shinies are just too ugly/similar to bother.

 

[AztecCroc]

Tradeback RBY is wildly different enough to warrant its own meta.

I suppose it makes sense to have them be a time capsule of sorts because it reflects how things were at the time.

For example, Electivire being OU in Gen 4 because everyone wanted to make it work at the time. Would it be UU if it was updated for the current meta? Probably. But it's not accurate to what it was back then.

Ideally, gens should have a cutoff point and have a "Historic Tier" and "Current Tier" IMO.


VGC is low-key a horrible example of it tho. After all, most of the in-game campaign is Singles. It's the main reason why Smogon is so popular, VGC is the one that feels like crazy house rules.


As for my unpopular opinion of the day... Shiny hunting is a fool's errand.

No, it's not because of anything related to the process itself. Most shinies are just too ugly/similar to bother.

Except some past gen stuff has been altered, some big stuff even, like the banning of the Gems in gen 5.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

Except some past gen stuff has been altered, some big stuff even, like the banning of the Gems in gen 5.

Which is why I said there should be a historic cutoff for the record and then the updated, current meta.

Did y'all know people actually play offense in GSC nowadays?

 

[Sixfortyfive]

No, it's not because of anything related to the process itself. Most shinies are just too ugly/similar to bother.

I've always derisively referred to them as freak genetic mutations.

 

[AztecCroc]

I mean you wanna see something that somehow embodies both ends of this oddity? Look at Gen 2 UU and UUBL or more accurately RU and UU. They've banned like 30-ish Pokémon in an attempt to keep the Tier as stall-y as they want it and won't accept that it's clearly just a lower tier at this point.

 

[CPU]

Y'know, it gets me how with Pokemon comp, the meta back then wasn't so adapting to change

Like it was only recently people realized Normal types weren't affected by Body Slam paralysis. Most of meta picks were set in stone for over a decade that point
But then man. Now we have a lot of changes. We went from "Moltres is the worst bird" to "Moltres does very well in RBYOU actually" after people started to experiment more

Gen 3 OU similarly is experimenting more these days, and then Gen 4 we had Clefable reinspected for being a bulky status immune mon after its Gen 6/7 success

It's a nice thing, to see people break out from stereotypical picks and find use that's more than just niche

The "Normal Types being immune to Body Slam" mechanics revelation is a good example of how Gen 1 players are willing to keep Gen 1 oddities despite their impact on the game. That was over 10 years of a metagame being played wrongly, and they were willing to run with the change.

Speaking of change, this is more of an unpopular opinion about Smogon itself rather than the Pokémon games, but I'm not totally happy with the current usage-based tiering. I think it makes sense, to a point, especially since the tiers themselves have the word "Used" in them. But it annoys me when a perfectly acceptable Pokémon in a lower tier gets removed and shut out from that tier (or tiers) just because it finds a significant niche in a higher tier to cause it to be tiered there instead. I started learning competitive Pokémon back when the "Used" designation wasn't indicative of how tiering happened, and tier lists were just kind of popular opinion on a Pokémon's strength/viability. While that system has some obvious problems, I do like how it didn't "punish" lower tiers for higher tiers finding clever uses for previously ignored Pokémon.

I know that documentation for a system like that would probably be more trouble than it's worth, but I envision it using the BL lists as "cutoff" points, kind of like how Ubers works; the Pokémon in the Ubers list are prohibited from being used in tiers below, but can be used in any above. I imagine that Pokémon would be assumed excluded until their usage falls low enough to be tested in lower tiers, but if they are shown to be healthy for a given tier, they could still be used, even if it reaches official usage stats to be placed back into a higher tier.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

The "Normal Types being immune to Body Slam" mechanics revelation is a good example of how Gen 1 players are willing to keep Gen 1 oddities despite their impact on the game. That was over 10 years of a metagame being played wrongly, and they were willing to run with the change.

Speaking of change, this is more of an unpopular opinion about Smogon itself rather than the Pokémon games, but I'm not totally happy with the current usage-based tiering. I think it makes sense, to a point, especially since the tiers themselves have the word "Used" in them. But it annoys me when a perfectly acceptable Pokémon in a lower tier gets removed and shut out from that tier (or tiers) just because it finds a significant niche in a higher tier to cause it to be tiered there instead. I started learning competitive Pokémon back when the "Used" designation wasn't indicative of how tiering happened, and tier lists were just kind of popular opinion on a Pokémon's strength/viability. While that system has some obvious problems, I do like how it didn't "punish" lower tiers for higher tiers finding clever uses for previously ignored Pokémon.

I know that documentation for a system like that would probably be more trouble than it's worth, but I envision it using the BL lists as "cutoff" points, kind of like how Ubers works; the Pokémon in the Ubers list are prohibited from being used in tiers below, but can be used in any above. I imagine that Pokémon would be assumed excluded until their usage falls low enough to be tested in lower tiers, but if they are shown to be healthy for a given tier, they could still be used, even if it reaches official usage stats to be placed back into a higher tier.

It's impossible to have an objective assessment of a mon's strength though.

The obvious counterpoint to this is that if a mon manages to rise up, even on a niche use, to a higher-tier, it means that it's working well enough to belong there.

And when It stops working... Well, we know the deal.

 

[CPU]

It's impossible to have an objective assessment of a mon's strength though.

The obvious counterpoint to this is that if a mon manages to rise up, even on a niche use, to a higher-tier, it means that it's working well enough to belong there.

And when It stops working... Well, we know the deal.

That's why I say to start things off with the current system, but let lower tiers keep their toys that still get used in, say, OU.

Gastrodon is the main case I am thinking of but I'm sure there are others.

 

[Sonikku A]

Then you have the weird cases of mons working better in higher tiers, but sucking in lower tiers