Yeah, Psychic Type is Ass.
I've talked about it before, but Psychic is a bottom 3 type.
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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
I've talked about it before, but Psychic is a bottom 3 type.
There's definitely a lot of factors to it. Part of it is a lot of people are genuinely attached to the Pokémon they catch and raise. Especially when the franchise encourages this, I can see why you would get a lot of personal anger towards this decision. Add in that something like this hasn't happened in the franchise since Ruby and Sapphire, and I can see why it was taken so poorly, but as you said, this is up to a point.
I think we all know by now fandom has been overtaken by a lot of unhealthy elements, and gaming, rather than being an exception, is one of the best examples of this. A lot of people take their hobbies way too personally, both in the sense that people will take someone insulting something they enjoy as a slight against them as well as the phenomenon best summed up as "this game sucks, and you suck for liking it." Not only that, you also have people who take this personal investment and develop weird relationships with game developers because of it. Some people are absolutely devout worshippers of these devs and believe they can do no wrong, or they take the opposite mindset and believe the devs are literally Satan and killed their grandma because they didn't manage the game correctly. It doesn't help that gamer culture is often very conspiratorial, as with much of internet culture, assuming that large institutions want to personally hurt them individually, subbing in the appropriate boogeyman according to their own ideology and neuroses, rather than try to understand the complex array of individual interactions and greater forces at work.
Fandom also has to deal with influencer culture as well. So many people will base their opinions on what popular youtubers or community figures say despite the fact these figures are often just as clueless as the fans that follow them. Let's be honest, most youtubers have a following due to entertainment value more than if they actually know what they're talking about. Add in echo chambers and fan narratives that often go unchecked because they are repeated so often, and you get fandoms that can be wildly off base on facts but still cling to them dogmatically no matter how many times you individually correct people.
In the end you wind up with large numbers of people who have no understanding of the facts, are easily influenced by people with no more understanding than they are, have no clue what may actually be wrong except on the surface level, and will take whatever is wrong as a personal attack. Of course this resulted in the absolutely toxic response to dexit that came about. It's not even the only time this has happened. From scapegoating Genwunners for literally everything they don't like in the franchise to the entirety of the Palworld nonsense, this pattern has played out time and time again. And frankly, nothing I've really seen will stop this until people as a whole realize how silly it is, but that won't happen for some time. Not only because I don't think people really will break with the factors that cause it, but also more new people will come into fandoms who fall for the exact same thing.
You're an asshole, got it
And here's the crux of the argument; I am a consumer's rights person so let me ask you, why do you disagree with people complaining about a product?
did you make that product? are you selling it? no? then why?
"oh but the feature is so minor (to me)" so what? setting aside the people for whom the feature is what makes Pokemon special, you're still being sold a more expensive product with less features, regardless how minor or not the features are, you're still being taken advantage of
"oh my, you said taken advantage of as if..." because you're being taken advantage of
are you perhaps thinking this is only (or even mainly) about Pokemon? because it isn't
did your Lipton tea shrink from 1.5 LT. to 1.25 LT?
you should complain about it
did your Colgate toothpaste get smaller, yet is now more expensive?
you should complain about it
your gin lost some of its alcohol content?
you. should. complain. about. it.
and by "you" I don't just mean Adeleine, I mean "you" as in "you the person reading this"
because every company is incentivized to give you the cheapest product for the most expensive price they can get away with, so every time you let them do that, you're being taken advantage of
and not only that, every time you let yourself be taken advantage of, you're telling companies to take advantage of others as well
so yeah, don't do that
I really don't think the practice of selling less of the same product for more is comparable to Dexit, since there's brand new Pokemon being introduced at the same time, and also because they're being attached to a whole-ass brand new game. The quality of said game is up for interpretation, but it is a new product.
Also it's arguably more consumer-friendly to people who are buying Pokemon games for the first time, since the de-emphasis of transfers means a greater number of Pokemon are available within the games themselves.
*glares at certain VGC legendaries*
im very niceys :)
Well, as you said, that is debatable, comparing Sun & Moon to Sword & Shield the latter is not 50% bigger and less character options means less character options
but the point is that people have the right to complain, and in fact should complain, when dissatisfied with a product period
no ome here is saying you need to eat whatever slop a company gives you. i never bought swsh proper and all my ds games are from an unlocked 3ds. what people are saying is that dexit has a disproportionate grip on the fandom considering
1. there are much more telling issues with pokemon games 2. its not even a big deal for the average consumer and you're not gonna get anyone rallying against anti consumer practice by picking dexit, when the average player doesnt even touch transfer features and would be more impacted with lack of content, bugs etc
1. there are much more telling issues with pokemon games 2. its not even a big deal for the average consumer and you're not gonna get anyone rallying against anti consumer practice by picking dexit, when the average player doesnt even touch transfer features and would be more impacted with lack of content, bugs etc
I agree, but it's important to be accurate with your complains, otherwise you discredit the actually valid critisims of problems that actually exist.
If someone goes "hey isn't it fucked how Nintendo is overcharging for their subpar online service and justifying it by stripping down their old Virtual Console store, turning it into yet another subscription model, and slapping it onto their online?" and someone else chimes in with "yeah, and their CEO Shuntaro Furukawa personally took a shit on my mother's grave!" that first person's critisism is going to be viewed as less valid due to being forcefully accosiated with the baseless second critisism.
I am frustrated with this post. I put a lot of time into trying to understand your initial post and see where you were coming from, which was not initially obvious to me. In return, it doesn’t seem like you read my post very carefully at all.
The question of “why do you disagree with people complaining about a product” is just… showing that you didn’t understand me at all. I took great pains to indicate that I understood some level of negativity for many people, and that for some people - like you - I even understood very high levels of negativity!
I objected to the motivation of many people complaining - somebody can do a correct thing for the wrong reason. Then, I objected the intensity of the complaining - not every consumer slight warrants deep, venom-filled, personal rage.
Instead of talking with someone who pulled out the stops to treat you right, you breezed past what she had to say so that you could lecture at the field. We aren’t impressed. However, if you consider what I have to say, take it seriously, and respond to it - even if you strongly disagree! - conversation could be much more fruitful.
But there’s subjectivity in how much a given feature or kind of content is “worth” to the individual person. Like for me, I literally could not physically care less about things like the Battle Frontier or Dexit. Meanwhile, SwSh has tons of quality of life changes that meaningfully improve my personal experience of the gameplay, and new features that I actually do want to engage with like Max Raid Battles, which added something that I thought the games had been sorely missing for a long time (rewarding coop battles). SwSh isn’t even one of my favorite games, and I do like several of the older games more than it, but it is nevertheless a product that I had a good time with and feel that I got my money’s worth out of.
I’m not going to say that you can’t or shouldn’t complain about features you like being removed, but I also don’t really think of myself as some poor hapless victim being sucked dry by the corpos just because SwSh has less of stuff that I don’t put much value on to begin with. I’m capable of determining for myself whether I think it’s worth what I spend on it and whether or not I’m being “taken advantage of.” I had the agency to say that this game wasn’t worth what I was paying for it if that’s how I really felt, but I fundamentally didn’t feel that way.
This is literally the exact reason why the politics thread was closed please don't ruin this thread too
Saying to move on from Dexit because of other features also seems like it misses the possibility for someone to value features differently. The open world, overwold mons, raids, picnics, etc. SV does have are not things I have any interest in. I don't care enough about presentation or bugginess that fixing them would move the needle. Fixing Dexit would, probably singlehandedly.
In terms of amount of passion, to be blunt I've had to restrain myself pretty hard in some of these conversations. I have only been able to connect with people through hobbies, and I knew right away that this would compromise one of my biggest ones. Since then I've been mostly unsuccessful at finding a long-term replacement. Business is going to business, and I'd say that this isn't the place to express all of the anger directed at them only because it isn't going to burn all of capitalism to the ground and that's something that I believe needs to happen and will incidentally solve the Gamefreak end of the problem. My own outrage every time this gets brought up is generally more personal. Because my preferences with the series align strongly with the areas of content that are being reduced, "it's fine because of other features" consistently comes off as "you don't matter here because you like unpopular stuff." So I feel the need to make my presence known, not to GF, but to people I am actively attempting to socially engage with. And sometimes that requires shouting over the crowd.
In terms of amount of passion, to be blunt I've had to restrain myself pretty hard in some of these conversations. I have only been able to connect with people through hobbies, and I knew right away that this would compromise one of my biggest ones. Since then I've been mostly unsuccessful at finding a long-term replacement. Business is going to business, and I'd say that this isn't the place to express all of the anger directed at them only because it isn't going to burn all of capitalism to the ground and that's something that I believe needs to happen and will incidentally solve the Gamefreak end of the problem. My own outrage every time this gets brought up is generally more personal. Because my preferences with the series align strongly with the areas of content that are being reduced, "it's fine because of other features" consistently comes off as "you don't matter here because you like unpopular stuff." So I feel the need to make my presence known, not to GF, but to people I am actively attempting to socially engage with. And sometimes that requires shouting over the crowd.
So to move on from people literally advocating for the death penalty for monetization practices in a video game, here's a more mild take.
Battle Spot Singles should take up more of a place in what people think of as "Competitive Pokémon" rather than just 6v6 singles and VGC. Not only is it one of the main ways people on cartridge can engage in competitive without having to go to some external forum, but it is also one of the main formats Gamefreak seems to balance for.
Battle Spot Singles should take up more of a place in what people think of as "Competitive Pokémon" rather than just 6v6 singles and VGC. Not only is it one of the main ways people on cartridge can engage in competitive without having to go to some external forum, but it is also one of the main formats Gamefreak seems to balance for.
I don't really agree with GF's balancing philosophy, so I'd actually consider that a downside. Now 6v6 Smogon-managed doubles, that's something that could get more credit.
From what I know, BSS is actually really popular in Japan.
It never really picked up outside that though. Maybe Smogon's existance (ironically) has to do with it since it's much easier to just plug and play smogon singles than actually train your own stuff in game (even with how easy it has become today) for a format that anyway doesn't have a proper public tournament.
Here's the thing: there's no balance issues.
People continue with this (pointless) assumption that all of the 1500 pokemon+forms must be viable.
No, that'd be an absolute shitshow and not possible in any real world.
And even if it was, you'd have 1500 exactly identical Pokemon and you'd just be playing checkers.
Any time a competitive game with a large amount of playable entities exists, there will *always* be a restricted % of top dogs, with a slightly bigger but still small % of "not top dogs but viable if you're really good at them or know what you're doing".
This applies to Pokemon. It applies to Mobas. It applies to fighting games. It even applies to card games where realistically there's only a handful of viable archetypes (if even) in a given moment and the rest is just rogue decks or matchup fishing.
There's a reason it's called "META": Most Effective Tactic Available. Because if you're playing a competitive game, and you're playing to win and not just for the sake of playing, then you will not use Pikachu, you will use Miraidon.
As a bonus, people really fail to understand *what* Gamefreaks is balancing as far as VGC goes.
They *know* certain mechanics are overpowered. They know they're killing defensive play. That's the whole point.
Have you ever watched a VGC stream? Most importantly, read the chat? If you haven't, amongst the various hacking ragebait, racist comments and genwunning, you will notice that people tend to be more active/interested in games with big swings and quick turns, than in slow positional games where players are playing extremely well but not much is happening due to constant swapping / flinching / protect playing.
The viewerbase of Pokemon tournaments is mainly younger people or people with no clue of how competitive actually works. They are much more interested in high risk momentum plays than in slow methodical approaches. There is a reason people hate Dondozo teams, and it's not cause they're op, it's cause they slow down the game.
It reminded me a lot of whenever i watch League of Legends tournaments, where people go full RESIDENTSLEEPER mode any time the teams are playing carefully without fighting and just farming and preparing for late game (which, note, is the *correct* play, not take pointless risks), because BOOOH WE WANT KILLS.
Also, sidenote, Dexit was inevitable. There was going to come a point where the amount of effort to port models to a new console was not justificable anymore, even before hitting potential space issues. You are delusional if you think it was never going to happen.
It was a mistake to keep portability to begin with.
You can say "booo i want my pokemon in Scarlet/Violet I care for them", but how many of you *actually* brought all of their pokemon forward every generation? I know some of you do (I did fwiw, every pokemon i caught on the DS and remotely cared for is either in my Violet cart or sitting in Home), but it's such a minor thing that it's both irrelevant and purposely trying to find a reason to be mad. Basically a very internet thing to do that actually is not relevant in the slightest because the large majority of the playerbase doesn't care (which again, is made of kids - young adults who play the game *once* to beat the story and then put it away without doing any postgame nor competitive gameplay and often without even finishing the Pokedex).
TLDR of this rant:
You all underestimate GameFreaks and Nintendo. The numbers show they know what they're doing, and they're doing it right.
Games' sales are skyrocketing. Scarlet/Violet actually surpassed gen 1 sales in Japan, something that was considered unthinkable.
VGC partecipation AND viewership is increasing. Even fucking Pokemon Go tournaments of all things have decently high viewership at this point.
Unfortunately, you do not obtain a degree in capitalism on reddit.
(and no, don't try to think I remotely like Nintendo, I dislike them as much as the next person, but regardless I cannot deny they know how to spin the capitalism wheel)
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Actual unpopular opinion: Dexit didn't go far enough. If you want a balanced metagame, the only way it happens is if GF cuts 80%+ of the pokedex, develops rules and guidelines for how mons should be designed, then rebalances the remaining 200 mons+100 newcomers to fit those guidelines. This would be a massive undertaking that involves everything from evolution levels and methods, movepools(and which moves exist period), abilities, stats, literally every element of the mons. And it would piss everyone off to such a degree that they'll never do it. It would also involve comparable amounts of work every time GF reintroduces old mons, though presumably designing new ones would be easier with actual guidelines for how to do it.
And it still wouldn't be balanced, at least not in the sense of "all final evolutions except legendaries are equally viable". But it could keep Gholdengo and Kingambit from showing up in a game used to TTar and Dragapult and expecting everyone to be cool with that.
I think a scorched-earth comprehensive overhaul like you're describing is going too far but as I've said previously I would totally endorse a broader shrinking of rosters for a purpose adjacent to this. Making every Pokemon competitively viable at the highest levels is never happening but every addition to a given regional dex should feel usable and have a unique function: Put in multiple Pokemon with the same major trait and one of them is bound to be the best in most situations, but the worst shouldn't be strictly obsoleted by the best one (Floatzel VS Basculegion is a good example of this principle, as well as all 3 Steel/Flyings having distinct playstyles and niches both competitively and casually). Again, I don't think you need some gigantic reworking of everything, however I also previously acknowledged that even this would hit a snag off the Pokedex shrinking part
Here's my contention with Dexit: Gamefreak clearly doesn't have any method to what gets picked, considering several mons, throwaway or otherwise, are now 4 Switch games in without being possible to get out of Home once they're in it. Inevitably several Pokemon are popular and ALWAYS will be in, but I'd appreciate if they could at least get a mon in if it hasn't been in like 2-previous ones by that point.
Dexit also brings to mind what I can only call "gimmick creep" where so many Pokemon have something to be "unique" that is a pain in the ass when they keep doing them and have to support mechanically (and should have curbed before Dexit even became a thing): see Furfrou, Alcremie, Oricorio, Minior, Deerling, Flabebe line, Gourgeist, Terapagos, etc.
These also become glaring with things like Terapagos, Ogerpon, and to a lesser extent Zacian/Zamazenta/Eternatus when their gimmick ends.
Dexit also brings to mind what I can only call "gimmick creep" where so many Pokemon have something to be "unique" that is a pain in the ass when they keep doing them and have to support mechanically (and should have curbed before Dexit even became a thing): see Furfrou, Alcremie, Oricorio, Minior, Deerling, Flabebe line, Gourgeist, Terapagos, etc.
These also become glaring with things like Terapagos, Ogerpon, and to a lesser extent Zacian/Zamazenta/Eternatus when their gimmick ends.
can't believe joe biden caused dexit smh this is why i didn't vote for him
You’re right, but that doesn’t mean they can’t mess with the proportion. If you take out certain Pokemon with Broken abilities or moves, that could increase the proportion of viable Pokemon. When I watch a tournament and every team is basically the same, as I have for VGC the last few years, it makes the game less interesting. There isn’t a good way to do this, but watching the format as it does now kinda irks me. Because it feels so uncreative. Now I know Cybertron shows some great teams that are unorthodox, but I don’t see those at the highest level.
Frankly, I don’t think Pokemon has had its potential scraped into in the same was it has with chess because its harder to do. But eventually through the game’s strongest players, and potentially computer developments, we’ll get there.
You could also do tiers like we do on Smogon, but obviously that would be a massive disaster lol.
Everyone loves offense. But that doesn’t mean you should shift the games so that offense is too powerful. The NFL has made the games easier for offenses, but it’s not like they’re gonna force the defense to use 10 people. And ironically, through systems that are out of their control, defense is actually back in a major way in the league.
Then again, the NBA has in my mind utterly ruined the game, and yet they’re making more money than ever. And like you said, viewership is rising. It feels like entertainment is getting into a larger and larger bubble as a whole, and I wonder what the future holds.
ESPN has dumbed down their content to an unbelievable degree too. It’s what the algorithm and experts think is best. But that doesn’t mean they should have.
I guess my unpopular opinion is that Game Freak has actually done a pretty fantastic job of balancing and designing modern pokemon gameplay wise. Considering the inherent limitations related to keeping mechanics consistent across both PvP and a single player RPG, not being able to make substantial retcons to existing game elements, trying to keep these game elements' properties in balance across both single and double battle rulesets, and wanting to add flashy bright buttons as a way to add something new to the game from a layman's perspective, Gen 9 especially is a rousing success. There is no way to design for all of these constraints without compromise, and I think they've done well on choosing those compromises across the board.
Do you mean modern Pokémon as in the games, or the modern generation Pokémon (critters) themselves?
I’m not really convinced given that several of the new Pokémon (particularly some of the more viable Paradox Pokémon) are outright unfun to fight against, as well as it left an after effect of making many older Pokémon even more obsolete than they already are. It did help that some Gen 9 Pokémon are mediocre, if workable, but the bad Pokémon from prior generations aren’t buffed to be usable in-game outside of the few lucky ones.
Effective in capitalism? Sure.
Not every Pokémon needing to be viable in competitive? Fair, given the number.
Dexit being inevitable? Absolutely.
But I beg you one question: Are some of the top tiers in recent generations immensively unfun to fight against?
For me, they really are. Making offense more viable is fine and all, but to go as far as making battle ending in far fewer turns than before can make the matches going way too fast with too few countermeasures.
50/50 is awful to fight against, as shown with Kingambit and Raging Bolt. Spammable 120 BP spread is awful to fight against, as shown with Terapagos and Calyrex’s Rider forms. A Pokémon that hit hard, fast and can survive one side with an easily spammable STAB can get on one’s nerve, as shown with Flutter Mane. Rain is also lot more painful to deal with with Archaludon entering the scene.
If spectacle and match speed are vastly prioritized over enjoyment, that is a problem that will eventually come to haunt VGC. Meta Knight almost singlehandedly killed Brawl competitive scene, Bayonetta did in Smash 4, and other hated top tier does it in other less popular competitve scenes. So it’s not a stretch to think that one day, the excessive power creep has gone so bad that VGC matches aren’t interesting to watch anymore.
I don't have a dog (Pokemon?) in this horse (Pokemon?) race, but this doesn't really apply to Smash. Brawl in general, and Meta Knight included, were the opposite of spectacle and match speed, which is a big reason that scene (at least unmodded) got killed. Bayo is closer to this, but she didn't kill the scene. Really the things that kills Smash scenes is "the new game got released". The most alive old Smash scene is by far the one with highest match speed, and at the very least up there for spectacle too, which is probably non-coincidental.
yeah smash is probably the worst thing to reference, considering melee is praised for its match speed and brawl was mocked for being slow, clunky and having sooo much fucking stalling because of mk. Bayo annoyed people but honestly i think she came in too late to kill the scene, it was dying mostly because everyone knew ult (smash 5 at the time) was coming soon lol
also its just hard to compare because pokemon is a turn based rpg which means even if we get 5000000000 speed stats, each pokemon does their own thing at their own turn. super fast paced fighting games will suffer because theyre hard to read and to follow, which is not a pokemon issue at all
also its just hard to compare because pokemon is a turn based rpg which means even if we get 5000000000 speed stats, each pokemon does their own thing at their own turn. super fast paced fighting games will suffer because theyre hard to read and to follow, which is not a pokemon issue at all
