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Unpopular opinions

Hugin said:
Here's an unpopular opinion: The pokemon games aren't woke. I appreciate the fandom's efforts to fix that, but I think it's important that we remember what the source material actually is.
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Pokemon it's one of the top franchises in the world so it appeals to a mainstream demographic. That's pretty well known and sometimes I don't get why people think it's queer friendly. Heck, this year's game they pulled "the friend/rival character is a girl if you pick the boy MC, and it's a boy if you pick the girl MC" and that flew over many ppl's heads lol.

It's fine for people to find representation in the media they like (in fact I'm glad to see how many different interpretations there are of things I enjoy), whether it was the author's intention or not, but like you said it's important to remember where it's coming from. My main takeaway is that people shouldn't be EXPECTING to see representation from big corpos, it will lead to disappointment if you really think that way or worse, the corpos could be aware of this and manipulate it to its advantage (Voltron fans I pity you...)
 
Mad Ram said:
I'm not sure about that. Japanese immigrant to Hawaii is pretty realistic. Japanese-Hawaiians actually outnumber natives.
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I imagine that’s also partially because the natives were subject to genocide when colonists came over to steal the land for their capital interests, which also resulted in an elimination of their culture. Notably, the goddess Tapu Fini is based on ( can’t remember the name ) had most books and records of her destroyed because of association of her with hell, making her “ sinful “. That, and the fact that the tourism industry is destroying the ecosystem and livelihoods of natives, makes me unwilling to go to Hawaii. And with that being said, I always kind of disliked the portrayal of Alola and how it’s based on Hawaii. It clearly underplays the real life devastation the native people and ecosystem have suffered by portraying Alola has a wonderful paradise for tourists with no acknowledgement of those injustices.

On another note, PP is a terribly outdated mechanic that needs to go. I understand it’s the equivalent of SP from other RPGs, and it’s supposed to be the other reason to use Pokemon Centers; but so much has changed since the early days that it’s a nothing but another layer of tedium. For starters, the routes are considerably shorter compared to older games, look at Galar’s victory road compared to Sinnoh’s and you’ll notice how much longer and more the tedious the latter, hence the importance of PP management. And the other reason stems from multiplayer battling. As someone who does facilities, it’s very important to PP up your Pokemon to ensure that you have an edge in PP stalling and against teams with Legendary Pokemon should they have Pressure as an ability. Problem is PP Ups are very rare, and a lot of games don’t have very consistent ways of getting them. In fact, outside of the Lottery ID system the only way to get PP ups from an infinite system would be a level 81-100 Pickup Pokemon in DPPt, though HGSS allowed you to obtain more via Pokeathlon, albeit on certain days only. To make matters worse, if you use a PP up on a Pokémon with a move then forget it, it gone forever, making it a waste. This happened to me when I was using Nagandel for the Battle Tree, I replaced Draco Meteor with Dragon Pulse and had to say goodbye to my boosted Draco Meteor PP along with the grind of PPup Dragon Pulse. A simple solution to this would be to give each PP of a Pokémon a “‘memory”.

The other reason has to do with Calyrex. Because the forms have different movesets, that means whenever you defuse Calyrex, you will forget all the moves that are exclusive to the form you have. Meaning if you PP Up any of those moves you will lose them, along with the boosted PP, wasting a valuable resource. And you will be also defusing, since you can only have one of either or Shadow or Ice Rider Calyrex. And at the very least, you want PP Up the respective signature move, meaning you are wasting three PP Up or a PP Max at the minimum.

My solution to this problem would be replace the PP system with a Skill Point Stat similar to the ones in Persona and Dragon Quest. Each move would have a Skill Point Cost, while every Pokemon would have a Skill Point Stat that would be affected by IVs and EVs. PP Ups and PP Maxes would instead serve as PP restoration. Granted, this isn’t going to happen because it would mean giving each Pokémon a new stat, which would take too long considering are already a rush job as it is.
 
DreamPrince said:
I imagine that’s also partially because the natives were subject to genocide when colonists came over to steal the land for their capital interests, which also resulted in an elimination of their culture. Notably, the goddess Tapu Fini is based on ( can’t remember the name ) had most books and records of her destroyed because of association of her with hell, making her “ sinful “. That, and the fact that the tourism industry is destroying the ecosystem and livelihoods of natives, makes me unwilling to go to Hawaii. And with that being said, I always kind of disliked the portrayal of Alola and how it’s based on Hawaii. It clearly underplays the real life devastation the native people and ecosystem have suffered by portraying Alola has a wonderful paradise for tourists with no acknowledgement of those injustices.

On another note, PP is a terribly outdated mechanic that needs to go. I understand it’s the equivalent of SP from other RPGs, and it’s supposed to be the other reason to use Pokemon Centers; but so much has changed since the early days that it’s a nothing but another layer of tedium. For starters, the routes are considerably shorter compared to older games, look at Galar’s victory road compared to Sinnoh’s and you’ll notice how much longer and more the tedious the latter, hence the importance of PP management. And the other reason stems from multiplayer battling. As someone who does facilities, it’s very important to PP up your Pokemon to ensure that you have an edge in PP stalling and against teams with Legendary Pokemon should they have Pressure as an ability. Problem is PP Ups are very rare, and a lot of games don’t have very consistent ways of getting them. In fact, outside of the Lottery ID system the only way to get PP ups from an infinite system would be a level 81-100 Pickup Pokemon in DPPt, though HGSS allowed you to obtain more via Pokeathlon, albeit on certain days only. To make matters worse, if you use a PP up on a Pokémon with a move then forget it, it gone forever, making it a waste. This happened to me when I was using Nagandel for the Battle Tree, I replaced Draco Meteor with Dragon Pulse and had to say goodbye to my boosted Draco Meteor PP along with the grind of PPup Dragon Pulse. A simple solution to this would be to give each PP of a Pokémon a “‘memory”.

The other reason has to do with Calyrex. Because the forms have different movesets, that means whenever you defuse Calyrex, you will forget all the moves that are exclusive to the form you have. Meaning if you PP Up any of those moves you will lose them, along with the boosted PP, wasting a valuable resource. And you will be also defusing, since you can only have one of either or Shadow or Ice Rider Calyrex. And at the very least, you want PP Up the respective signature move, meaning you are wasting three PP Up or a PP Max at the minimum.

My solution to this problem would be replace the PP system with a Skill Point Stat similar to the ones in Persona and Dragon Quest. Each move would have a Skill Point Cost, while every Pokemon would have a Skill Point Stat that would be affected by IVs and EVs. PP Ups and PP Maxes would instead serve as PP restoration. Granted, this isn’t going to happen because it would mean giving each Pokémon a new stat, which would take too long considering are already a rush job as it is.
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There’s more than just the time consuming process of giving each Pokémon of a new stat, it can be due to potential balancing issues the new stat can cause given this concept, especially if it results of already best Pokémon even better if the blatant “in-game hierarchy” is to go by.

Early game or single stage Pokémon with weak stats? Expect them to run out of Skill Points fast and spent a lot of money just to keep their SP above zero.
Meanwhile, 550+ Pokémon might never worry about running out of Skill Points unless it is constantly used as a solo Pokémon. Doubly true for 660+ BST Legendaries.

Not to mention that GF might give more Skill Points to Pokémon with higher Speed than Pokémon that has lower Speed, making Speed even more dominant of a stat than it already is, instead of the other way around that allows slower Pokémon compensating their Speed beyond possibly high bulk.

Unless PP-restoring methods become easier to come by, the Skill Point Stat might end up doing more damage than help.
 
DreamPrince said:
On another note, PP is a terribly outdated mechanic that needs to go. I understand it’s the equivalent of SP from other RPGs, and it’s supposed to be the other reason to use Pokemon Centers; but so much has changed since the early days that it’s a nothing but another layer of tedium. For starters, the routes are considerably shorter compared to older games, look at Galar’s victory road compared to Sinnoh’s and you’ll notice how much longer and more the tedious the latter, hence the importance of PP management. And the other reason stems from multiplayer battling. As someone who does facilities, it’s very important to PP up your Pokemon to ensure that you have an edge in PP stalling and against teams with Legendary Pokemon should they have Pressure as an ability. Problem is PP Ups are very rare, and a lot of games don’t have very consistent ways of getting them. In fact, outside of the Lottery ID system the only way to get PP ups from an infinite system would be a level 81-100 Pickup Pokemon in DPPt, though HGSS allowed you to obtain more via Pokeathlon, albeit on certain days only. To make matters worse, if you use a PP up on a Pokémon with a move then forget it, it gone forever, making it a waste. This happened to me when I was using Nagandel for the Battle Tree, I replaced Draco Meteor with Dragon Pulse and had to say goodbye to my boosted Draco Meteor PP along with the grind of PPup Dragon Pulse. A simple solution to this would be to give each PP of a Pokémon a “‘memory”.

The other reason has to do with Calyrex. Because the forms have different movesets, that means whenever you defuse Calyrex, you will forget all the moves that are exclusive to the form you have. Meaning if you PP Up any of those moves you will lose them, along with the boosted PP, wasting a valuable resource. And you will be also defusing, since you can only have one of either or Shadow or Ice Rider Calyrex. And at the very least, you want PP Up the respective signature move, meaning you are wasting three PP Up or a PP Max at the minimum.

My solution to this problem would be replace the PP system with a Skill Point Stat similar to the ones in Persona and Dragon Quest. Each move would have a Skill Point Cost, while every Pokemon would have a Skill Point Stat that would be affected by IVs and EVs. PP Ups and PP Maxes would instead serve as PP restoration. Granted, this isn’t going to happen because it would mean giving each Pokémon a new stat, which would take too long considering are already a rush job as it is.
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Like a lot of other items that previously required grinding out Battle Points (or other inconvenient methods), SV has you covered for PP Ups. You do need to wait until postgame, but PP Ups become buyable for 10k apiece from every Chansey Supply, the same cost as other vitamins. This doesn't do anything for the past, but is a good indication for the future.
 
There's also an argument to be made that PP of different moves not being interchangeable is a good thing. Would you really want to fight a Toxapex or other defensive mon with 32 uses of Recover? Sure, it does nothing. But the AI already has a tendency to spam healing or protection if its consistently hit to a certain HP level, and it probably doesn't get much better in a PVP situation where timer stalling is available.
 
Samtendo09 said:
There’s more than just the time consuming process of giving each Pokémon of a new stat, it can be due to potential balancing issues the new stat can cause given this concept, especially if it results of already best Pokémon even better if the blatant “in-game hierarchy” is to go by.

Early game or single stage Pokémon with weak stats? Expect them to run out of Skill Points fast and spent a lot of money just to keep their SP above zero.
Meanwhile, 550+ Pokémon might never worry about running out of Skill Points unless it is constantly used as a solo Pokémon. Doubly true for 660+ BST Legendaries.

Not to mention that GF might give more Skill Points to Pokémon with higher Speed than Pokémon that has lower Speed, making Speed even more dominant of a stat than it already is, instead of the other way around that allows slower Pokémon compensating their Speed beyond possibly high bulk.

Unless PP-restoring methods become easier to come by, the Skill Point Stat might end up doing more damage than help.
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Well actually, the Pokémon Center would restore your Skill Points, so I don’t believe you would need to spend that much money on Skill Points. And as you level, your Skill Points Increase, lowering the need.
Merritt said:
Like a lot of other items that previously required grinding out Battle Points (or other inconvenient methods), SV has you covered for PP Ups. You do need to wait until postgame, but PP Ups become buyable for 10k apiece from every Chansey Supply, the same cost as other vitamins. This doesn't do anything for the past, but is a good indication for the future.
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Yeah, but it’s still a very expensive grind and from what I’ve seen from I’m Blissey’s videos the most effective way to gain money is the academy tourney with Amulet Coin + Make it Rain-still a grind, especially when you need money to buy other items.
Ironmage said:
There's also an argument to be made that PP of different moves not being interchangeable is a good thing. Would you really want to fight a Toxapex or other defensive mon with 32 uses of Recover? Sure, it does nothing. But the AI already has a tendency to spam healing or protection if its consistently hit to a certain HP level, and it probably doesn't get much better in a PVP situation where timer stalling is available.
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I don’t see how it would make it more stall-ey. If anything, I see it being stalley. Let’s just say you have a Toxapex with 100 SP and Recover costs 50 while Toxic is 10 and Baneful Bunker is 5. This makes it harder to stall since you share a universal gauge has opposed to each move having its own currency.
 
I can’t say that I have much of an opinion on Power Points as a mechanic other than that I do think Legends Arceus had some neat applications with the move styles and that I do think there are some moves that should have their maximum number changed. The fact that Ice Beam has a lower count than Flamethrower and Thunderbolt has always stuck out to me, though maybe their logic was that Ice-Type moves should have less because of Freeze…?

Recovery moves have been mentioned a few times recently, though, and those I do have a more contentious opinion on. I think recovery moves should have negative priority, similar to the Teleport buff. Let me explain.

Have you ever been in a situation where you’re fighting something, use a recovery move, but you ended up taking more damage from the opponent than you healed with your own move? It sucks, doesn’t it? Or maybe you’re using a slower, bulkier Pokémon who is healing for more than they took, but because the Pokémon you’re walling is even slower than you- keep in mind, Speed and priority are important mechanics even for defensive Pokémon- not only are you at risk of a stray critical hit after getting your heal off, but the actual net value of your healing still might not be as high as it could be.

A Blissey that’s at 50% HP and takes 33% from a neutral physical move would rather take the 33% of damage first and then heal with Soft-Boiled to what would be 67% instead of heal all the way back to 100% and then have to deal with the incoming hit afterwards. Both scenarios are the same amount of net healing in this instance- 17%- but A. most Pokémon aren’t Blissey, and B. this would enable Blissey to more easily able to heal against certain reads against slower things, say a Gen 9 Garganacl using Stealth Rock, for example. This would admittedly be a more niche change than the extremities caused by the buffed Teleport, and most of the time I do think this change would be a buff in favor of the healing move user without Game Freak having to actually change any of the moves’ numbers.

Edit: I forgot to mention that this would be enhanced by the fact that Leftovers and things like Leech Seed almost always act after all Pokémon the field have used a move. Shoutouts to Celebi who gets Leech Seed and Recover and has the perfect base stats to still be fast while being able to take some hits and heal against even faster Pokémon.
 
Merritt said:
Like a lot of other items that previously required grinding out Battle Points (or other inconvenient methods), SV has you covered for PP Ups. You do need to wait until postgame, but PP Ups become buyable for 10k apiece from every Chansey Supply, the same cost as other vitamins. This doesn't do anything for the past, but is a good indication for the future.
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I mean this is cool and all but the fact that the map doesn't mark where the stores even are still makes obtaining PP Ups a pain.

I kept having to fly to Levincia to buy them because it was the only city where I knew the Chansey Supply even was.

Edit:
bdt2002 said:
Recovery moves have been mentioned a few times recently, though, and those I do have a more contentious opinion on. I think recovery moves should have negative priority, similar to the Teleport buff. Let me explain.
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Tbh they should just be deleted. It really feels like Game Freak is already super close to doing that anyway.
 
Bog Monster said:
Zoom in.
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I cannot be assed to boot up my copy of Violet right now, but part of the problem is that iirc stores aren't clearly marked on the minimap. Between that and how clunky it is to use the regular map I consistently had trouble finding stores or getting around any of the towns.
 
i've been working on creating a mod for Pokemon Crystal. It's been a blast and I'm excited to play the final product, as I feel like I've fixed a lot of the game's flaws. One thing I will say, is that although I don't understand all of the code yet, working behind the scenes helps me understand certain decisions the developers made.

The developers clearly wanted the player to discover some Pokemon themselves, and did not want to have Pokemon be on multiple boss's teams whenever possible. Also, they wanted to make gyms from the 8 types that were not used for gyms in Kanto. This is a problem because the distribution of Pokemon they created was not even at all amongst the types. I'm trying to make the gym leaders harder, but for some types, especially those in the second half of the game, there aren't a whole lot of options. I'm willing to add whatever Pokemon fit the type on their teams because I'm not discovering them for the first time, but I do think I'm making the game lose some of its charm by doing so.

Another problem with Pokemon availability is how small Johto is. There's only like 10 routes throughout the game, and you can only throw so many Pokemon on those routes while still keeping normal design motifs in place like having common Pokemon inhabit 70% of most routes. I'm fixing that too, but I do think I'm making the game lose some charm there too.

But one thing that has absolutely mystified me, is Slowking and Politoed. In later generations, more is done to differentiate them, but you'd think that, if you were going to split an evolutionary line like that, you'd be more ambitious in what you changed. Slowking is the same type with practically the same stats and movepool, and Politoed is another water type in a game full of water types. And it gets, what, Perish Song?? Like Scizor and Scyther are cool because they're both strong in their own way, Kingdra, Steelix, and Porygon2 improve upon the original, but Slowking and Politoed split an evolutionary line, are intentionally hard to get, and there is no reward (beyond their obviously cool design)
 
Sprig (Meowscarada) said:
Pikachu is overrated.
Also, Pichu gets a share of the fame, yet I have yet to see ANY Raichu marketing AT ALL.
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I'm not a big toy collector when it comes to Pokemon, but approximately a million years ago Burger King (I think?) did a promotion for one of the movies (I want to say the first movie... might have been the second) and gave away little figurines with each meal and I ended up getting a Raichu purely by chance. Loved that little thing, it was so cute and cemented my preference for Raichu over Pikachu.

EDIT: Just Googled it out of curiosity and found it! Didn't expect it to be that easy to find.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/373923367165
 
QuentinQuonce said:
I'm not a big toy collector when it comes to Pokemon, but approximately a million years ago Burger King (I think?) did a promotion for one of the movies (I want to say the first movie... might have been the second) and gave away little figurines with each meal and I ended up getting a Raichu purely by chance. Loved that little thing, it was so cute and cemented my preference for Raichu over Pikachu.

EDIT: Just Googled it out of curiosity and found it! Didn't expect it to be that easy to find.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/373923367165
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The Burger King Pokemon toys are pretty well known and popular.
 
Pika family rankings

Alolan Raichu > Classic Fat Pikachu > Vanilla Raichu > Pichu > Good Pikaclones (Pachirisu, Togedemaru) > Current Pikachu > Bad Pikaclones (Morpeko, Pawmot) > That stupid Notch Eared Pichu Promotion
 
My Pikachu-related hot take is that Ash's evolving into Raichu could actually work narratively under one specific circumstance: Make him the final boss in the all previous protags return fanservice season 10-15 years from now and give the new guy his own Pikachu or the new Pikaclone. Full circle parallel to Ash VS Lt. Surge

(Also make it evolve into Alolan Raichu specifically)
 
Yung Dramps said:
My Pikachu-related hot take is that Ash's evolving into Raichu could actually work narratively under one specific circumstance: Make him the final boss in the all previous protags return fanservice season 10-15 years from now and give the new guy his own Pikachu or the new Pikaclone. Full circle parallel to Ash VS Lt. Surge

(Also make it evolve into Alolan Raichu specifically)
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Idk about this. It worked for Iris's Axew, but only because he earnestly wanted to evolve right from the beginning. Pikachu's character, by contrast, has always been about wanting to be strong on his own terms and prove wrong the perception that evolution = strength. Ash's battle against Surge demonstrates that Raichu is more physically and elementally powerful than Pikachu, but ultimately they win by proving that those aren't the only things that matter: Pikachu finds a way to defeat Raichu through its superior speed and agility.

I wouldn't mind seeing Ash return down the line, but having him come back in a few years with an evolved Raichu would go against that - I feel like it would imply that Pikachu got over this and "grew up" to embrace conformity, which is a fairly depressing angle to take. You couldn't really even do a parallel with Surge because Surge saw no value in having a Pikachu and evolved his straight away, which is manifestly not the case with Ash - his Pikachu has defeated legendaries and Gigantamax Pokemon.

Although I will concede that if it ever does evolve, Alolan Raichu feels more like the way it should go
 
One catch is that Journeys revealed Ash's Pikachu inherently has the Gigantamax Factor as it revealed its G-Max form early in Journeys.

And Pikachu with the G-Max Factor are expressly unable to evolve.

In this case it technically counts as a retcon since G-Max wasn't a thing until Gen 8, but this basically explicitly rules out any prospect of Ash's Pikachu ever evolving, as this essentially for all intents and purposes means Ash's Pikachu is explicitly unable to evolve. Not that it would ever want to in the first place, since it was established very early in Ash's story that it didn't want to evolve. But now that basically gives an in-universe catch that ensures it never will even if it hypothetically did change its mind because it outright can't.

Unless, by some chance, Ash one day used Max Mushrooms to undo Pikachu's G-Max factor. Which would undo the catch. But that basically, possibly unintentionally or intentionally, solidified it by making it outright unable to evolve in a way.
 
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