I think theres merit for it, but in execution you kinda just end up mashing the two together anyway, either with rock/grounds a-plenty in the first gen, or just them sharing 80% of their moveset to the point that you can expect a rock type to pop an earthquake and a ground type to use rock slide. So all that we're left with is the type interactions, which are interesting but... i dont actually think... rock offers much for the game? Defense wise its kinda worthless (just adding one more advantage to already strong types, and grass is there i guess), and offense wise it has some of the worst designed moves in the series + the fact that they share a buncha moves means ground types get to bypass the flying immunity even without an extra type or insane coverage or something. and it means they get to spam stupid shit like stone edge and rock slide. but also everything gets rock slide nowadays so maybe just delete rock slide from the game
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SPOILERS! Mysteries and Conspiracies of Pokemon
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Rock's contribution to the type chart seems to have originally been as a Normal resist, a role that has largely been subsumed by the Steel type and also isn't nearly as important as it once was.
Maybe they should have made Ground the Nether type and make it about things coming from below. It would have been a nice counterpart to Flying if that were about things coming from above, especially if Flying got renamed to "Aether".
But I think an important purpose of Ground is to make some Pokémon more special. For example, Ursaluna, Donphan, Mudsdale, and Diggersby are just regular animals but with the ground type added they become more special. And they are animals that walk on ground, bunnies even like digging, so it at least kind of fits.
Ground also serves to nerf electric which is pretty important because Electric is otherwise a great type. And Rock is probably indeed to resist normal type attacks and to show players that you need to use special moves, too. It also helps in making Charmander the difficult mode of RB.
But I think an important purpose of Ground is to make some Pokémon more special. For example, Ursaluna, Donphan, Mudsdale, and Diggersby are just regular animals but with the ground type added they become more special. And they are animals that walk on ground, bunnies even like digging, so it at least kind of fits.
Ground also serves to nerf electric which is pretty important because Electric is otherwise a great type. And Rock is probably indeed to resist normal type attacks and to show players that you need to use special moves, too. It also helps in making Charmander the difficult mode of RB.
Poor predictable Rock catching strays because of Ground inadequacies.
Really, you could just combine the defensive profile of both types(call it Earth), make every mon of either type now Earth, and it would be a defensive improvement across the board. Even current Ground/Rocks would at least drop to only a 2x weakness to Grass and Water with minimal other changes. The problem is, what then do you do for the offensive properties of the Earth type?
super effective against Bug, Ice, Poison, Electric, Fire and Flying against except make approximately 30 moves have the "cannot hit flying type" flag
We could call this flag something akin to "ground", and maybe make some abilities that take advantage of this trait
Sorry, I don't share the vision. It's the same if someone proposed to lump Ice and Water in the same type or to make a Supernatural type to combine Ghost and Psychic. Could it be done? Yes. Should it be done? Probably not.
And you if are going for Rock and Ground, you should go for Steel too. Call it Mineral type and you get the best defensive profile with a pretty good attack.
And you if are going for Rock and Ground, you should go for Steel too. Call it Mineral type and you get the best defensive profile with a pretty good attack.
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I'm gonna be honest, at this point Ground and Rock have both been grandfathered in and do have a lot of pieces that separate them from one another that makes them unique. Really the big problem with Ground and Rock is how they're almost always tied into one another because that's what Gen 1 did, or how every Rock and Ground type learns the others moves, but that's really not much different from other types like Water and Ice.
Meanwhile, Ground as mentioned encompasses stuff like Sand, the Dirt itself and Clay meanwhile Rocks covers Stones, Ores and Gemstones and how those interact with the world is so very different from one another. Like punching a Boulder is so different from punching a mole. (please do not punch moles)
Plus there's stuff like Solrock, Lunatone and Minior, who are all from space.
And one thing I was never big on about the Earth type is how it basically amounts to 'rename Ground type, add on a Steel weakness and Fire resistance and kill Rock as a type.' Which is find rather boring and ultimately makes it all feel pointless.
(Plus the argument of lumping in Steel because it's still a mineral, literally found in the earth)
Limitation breeds innovation, and I feel having just this broad Earth type would ironically be more limiting. And if Gamefreak doesn't wanna make more new Ground types that feels less like them not having new ideas, but moreso just not wanting to make more; same reasoning they haven't made more Pure Flying types, or really a good number of other types in recent gens
Meanwhile, Ground as mentioned encompasses stuff like Sand, the Dirt itself and Clay meanwhile Rocks covers Stones, Ores and Gemstones and how those interact with the world is so very different from one another. Like punching a Boulder is so different from punching a mole. (please do not punch moles)
Plus there's stuff like Solrock, Lunatone and Minior, who are all from space.
And one thing I was never big on about the Earth type is how it basically amounts to 'rename Ground type, add on a Steel weakness and Fire resistance and kill Rock as a type.' Which is find rather boring and ultimately makes it all feel pointless.
(Plus the argument of lumping in Steel because it's still a mineral, literally found in the earth)
Limitation breeds innovation, and I feel having just this broad Earth type would ironically be more limiting. And if Gamefreak doesn't wanna make more new Ground types that feels less like them not having new ideas, but moreso just not wanting to make more; same reasoning they haven't made more Pure Flying types, or really a good number of other types in recent gens
From what little I've played of the TCG, lumping types together seems to be a necessary concession for gameplay balance. It's more MTG than YGO and you can't get away with a lot of types in the former system like you can with the latter.
There's an argument that MTG is designed around 20 types (2-colour and 3-colour combinations) rather than the 5-6 (colourless has had a lot of legitimacy creep) basic elements. I could easily see Pokemon TCG mapping more Pokemon types to existing combinations rather than just having every multicolour card be Dragon. For example, Fairy be focused around Grass and Psychic, including both them separately (florges as straight grass, clefable as straight psychic) as well as cards that require both energies.
My take on extremely intelligent Pokemon not taking over the world is that they have to spend almost all of their brainpower on maintaining extremely precise control over their body, which would normally be done instinctively. Most of them are psychic types, which is a type with strong self-mastery themes, but their self-mastery can come with/arise from their dependence on conscious effort/analytical thinking to make any sort of decision or even carry out bodily functions.
Fighting is also big on self-mastery, but it comes across as more of a means to an end (to hit harder, become tougher and avoid distractions) than deeply ingrained or super necessary.
Only about 5% of our decisions are conscious. So, if this 5% is an average human's 100 IQ, it would take 2000 to make all these decisions consciously (it doesn't quite scale like that, but it's for emphasis), and even more to carry out physical functions on top of that.
That would make them seem just as "dumb" and animalistic as the average Pokemon most of the time from the outside, but whenever something (a technique or outside factors) helps them self-regulate, it allows them to reach their actual cognitive potential in short bursts. That's why Oranguru comes off as more civilized and sophisticated; its Normal type makes it close to a mundane creature with strong instincts, freeing up cognitive resources.
Fighting is also big on self-mastery, but it comes across as more of a means to an end (to hit harder, become tougher and avoid distractions) than deeply ingrained or super necessary.
Only about 5% of our decisions are conscious. So, if this 5% is an average human's 100 IQ, it would take 2000 to make all these decisions consciously (it doesn't quite scale like that, but it's for emphasis), and even more to carry out physical functions on top of that.
That would make them seem just as "dumb" and animalistic as the average Pokemon most of the time from the outside, but whenever something (a technique or outside factors) helps them self-regulate, it allows them to reach their actual cognitive potential in short bursts. That's why Oranguru comes off as more civilized and sophisticated; its Normal type makes it close to a mundane creature with strong instincts, freeing up cognitive resources.
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One minor mystery I've wondered about is the design decision behind Poltergeist's animation. It uses Marshadow's shadow motif from spectral thief, instead of some more generic ghost motif (like the gen 1 pre-Silph scope ghost or Astral barrage's ghosts), but other than Marshadow learning the move in SwSh there is no apparent connection that explains the use of its shadows.
It seems strange to use a Pokemon-specific motif for a generic move when they have gone to pains to change animations for signature moves called by metronome or copied by Sketch (e.g., dragon darts, Mind Blown).
I wonder if at one point Poltergeist started life as another signature move for Marshadow to replace the loss of its z-move, similar to what Kommo-o got in SwSh, and then was ultimately deemed unnecessary and repurposed as an Isle of Armor tutor move without bothering to change the animation. Marshadow was coded into the base game, though, so if poltergeist had been planned that early they would have had plenty of time to change its animation.
Spectral thief:
Poltergeist:
(Images from Bulbapedia)
It's annoying enough that Pokemon GO hasn't give Marshadow Spectral Thief yet, but it seems extra weird that Poltergeist exists, still uses Marshadow's shadows, but it still can't learn it (or any ghost move!!!)
It seems strange to use a Pokemon-specific motif for a generic move when they have gone to pains to change animations for signature moves called by metronome or copied by Sketch (e.g., dragon darts, Mind Blown).
I wonder if at one point Poltergeist started life as another signature move for Marshadow to replace the loss of its z-move, similar to what Kommo-o got in SwSh, and then was ultimately deemed unnecessary and repurposed as an Isle of Armor tutor move without bothering to change the animation. Marshadow was coded into the base game, though, so if poltergeist had been planned that early they would have had plenty of time to change its animation.
Spectral thief:
Poltergeist:
(Images from Bulbapedia)
It's annoying enough that Pokemon GO hasn't give Marshadow Spectral Thief yet, but it seems extra weird that Poltergeist exists, still uses Marshadow's shadows, but it still can't learn it (or any ghost move!!!)
Holy shit yeah those are just upside down Marshadow heads.
I don't know if this fits the format of this thread but I'm still going to yap about the thoughts.
Xerneas is so incredibly depressing to me. The entire gameplay design of this pokemon in practice is just Fairy Aura and Geomancy. Fairy Aura as a damage multiplier on an already strong STAB type is a huge streamlining force on the design already, making any coverage move that doesn't actively deal Super Effective damage to a relevant foe completely worthless. Then Geomancy takes this already streamlined gameplay function and further streamlines it to the point of absurdity as it is rendered complete and utter 2 piece combo merchant with Power Herb. In singles it at least has situational benefits when running sets that utilize choice items, which by relative necessity run 4 distinct attacking moves, but even there it will often use filler like Sleep Talk or Aromatherapy to fill out moveslots because nobody is confused on the show they're here to see when they bring a Xerneas into battle. In doubles, it isn't even that vaired. You pretty much always run Moonblast, Dazzling Gleam, Protect, and Geomancy with the required Power Herb, and if the metagame produced something you couldn't bowl over with that exact set you sat in a corner and cried. I've complained before that I don't tend to like Mega Pokemon due to being restricted in variety by lacking an item and often being pigeon-holed into specific moves as a result of lacking an item, and Doubles Xerneas has less set variety than many Mega Pokemon in practice despite technically being allowed to hold other items. It is in my mind a significant step towards the general Offense creep of the game amongst legendary Pokemon, a line which divides the sometimes Offensive-leaning but usually just massively statted box-art legends of the older games from the BST Optimized, steroid boosted, deliberately manufactured, terminology juiced, big red button mashing modern game mascots. Even past beyond that trend though, it's not unreasonable to think that several of the future frontrunners were built to try and step up to Xerneas's obscenely high level or deliberately act as a metagame plant stopgap to it. (In XY, the only Pokemon above 600 BST that could resist Fairy attacks without holding a Mega Stone or Arceus Plate was Ho-oh!) Xerneas is at minimum a transcendentally defining gameplay design for the modern era of Pokemon, and I would personally go further in calling it the standout misstep.
But it didn't really have to be this way. When you take Geomancy and Fairy Aura out of Xerneas, you can start to see a picture form of a much more interesting gameplay design that could have been. Like for instance, did you know Xerneas has equal Attack and Special Attack? You'd never really think to see Physical Xerneas due to just how overbearingly dominant the influence of Moonblast / Dazzling Gleam / Geomancy is on Xerneas's gameplay but it does get Play Rough and has even teched moves like Close Combat and Rock Slide on some extremely rare occasions in Singles for Blissey and Ho-oh respectively. Even beyond just being a physical attacker, we almost had a little prototype Iron Valiant-esqe mixed attacker here with Moonblast and Close Combat as main attacking moves with a wide pool of coverage to pull from alongside decent utility and setup options. I wish that could have been Xerneas' ultimate focus, but I can also see that just pulling Geomancy and Fairy Aura out from underneath it does leave a bit of a void. There is room for there to be something special about Xerneas aside from just absurd damage numbers.
Another disappointing thing in Generation 6, at least insofar as it existed at that point, was Terrains. It's fairly easy to forget that Grassy, Misty, and Electric Terrain were even in Generation 6 because they are so completely disjointed from any relevance in any realm the game is played in. The extremely obvious reason for this is simply that the Terrain Surge abilities are not in the game whatsoever, but there were no Terrain Seeds or Terrain Extender to utilize for additional synergies, and the users of manual terrain moves are sparse in number, poor in quality, and lacking in any kind of disjoint from their type's respective flavor base to give some kind of reason to use them outside of needlessly stacking a specific type. Thinking about how depreciated Terrains are as a mechanic in Gen 6, I've spent multiple nights awake wondering about what Terrains were meant to be in these games.
So today, a rare day where these two brainworm addled thoughts have come together to haunt me over my day, I have a lot of thoughts on how these two game elements may have had a deeply intertwined and tumultuous relationship during the Generation 6's development. What if Xerneas was initially meant to have a Terrain Setting ability? What if the reason it was shelved was due to the awkward gameplay dynamics in the games' final legendary triplet? And what is the connective tissue between all of this?
To establish this, I want to first look at the effects of Terrains
- Electric Terrain amplifies Electric Type damage and prevents Pokemon on the field from falling sleep.
- Grassy Terrain amplifies Grass Type damage, heals Pokemon for 1/16th of their Max HP each turn, and reduces the damage of Earthquake by half.
- Misty Terrain halves the damage of Dragon Type attacks and prevents Pokemon from being afflicted with status conditions.
These design choices, in my view, are all made with intention. As much as Terrains ended up a depreciated mechanic in the final product of Generation 6, it's clear they were drafted in response to the trends of Generation 5. Two of the terrains directly address Sleep specifically, which was extremely strong in Gen 5. Grassy Terrain directly addresses Earthquake, which was especially notable in the wake of a VGC format in Ground type offense was especially dominant thanks to Landorus-Therian, Garchomp, Mamoswine, and Excadrill among others. Misty Terrain blocking Confusion and Paralysis are especially relevant given the near ubiquitous use of Thunder Wave and Swagger sets in VGC formats.
Electric and Grass type damage multipliers are largely just functions which make these fields worth setting, similar to Rain and Sun. (This was prior to the Terrain Nerfs, so they were 1.5* multipliers) Both do hold a small amount of contextual relevance as buffs. By the time of Generation 5 in particular a noticeable quality gap had developed between the Electric types that were not grounded and the ones that were. Even ignoring the inherent synergy in throwing off usual ways to check Electric as a type by detaching their defensive weaknesses from their offensive shortcomings, Pokemon like the Rotom Appliances, Zapdos, and Thundurus were just better than others like Raikou and Kantonian Raichu, and Electric Terrain acting as a tool to buff only the grounded Electric types without applying to the already strong Flying / Levitating ones was an important nuance. The idea with Grass types is a bit more loose, but a buff focusing on relatively weak Grass type damage rather than the already strong Grass type utility tools makes sense as a choice. (To some extent, even just applying to Grounded Pokemon was a notable choice - there were lots of powerful and defining Levitate Pokemon at the time!)
Which leads to Misty Terrain. Where Electric and Grassy Terrains give a damage boost to a relevant type, Misty Terrain gives a nerf to Dragon type damage... which Fairy, the type Misty Terrain is associated with, is already immune to. Being associated with the Fairy type and having threadbare flavor associations otherwise, the only pokemon to learn Misty Terrain without any extant connection to the Fairy type (to this day!) are Meowstic-Male, Alomomola, Volcanion, and the Quaxly line. As it would be used in Generation 6, Misty Terrain as a move is just... weird, complicated Safeguard. Today the Dragon Type damage debuff is third to using the move to cancel out opposing Terrain or activate an ally's Terrain Seed. At the time, I guess that would have been the selling point of the move? Without an attached damage multiplier to it, this move is uniquely useless, redundant, and obscure. I didn't really know how to understand it.
Then, someone pointed out to me that nothing about Misty Terrain requires the existence of the Fairy type. And that the Dragon type debuff portion of the mechanic would arguably make more sense in Generation 5, a game filled to the brim with game warping Dragon type offense, than in any generation afterwards... which all have the Fairy type, which not only directly fills the defensive function of taking Dragon type attacks but also does so without needing a damage reduction multiplier given they have an immunity, but also passively dissuades many of the greediest Dragon damage spamming strategies that were common prior to Fairy types existing. If the flavor disconnect was solved somehow, maybe by associating Misty Terrain with Flying, Ghost, or Ice types, the move could exist with 0 implementation issues and would be a reasonably fleshed out mechanic on it's own. That to me is a compelling idea! It's clear the design changes around Misty Terrain's implementation did not age well with the trends of the game, but such is the reality of introducing volleys of gameplay changes in bursts every few years.
This focus on existing without the Fairy type does lead me back to Xerneas, and whether or not Misty Surge Xerneas makes sense. Most obviously, it would be a very team-support focused ability, blocking status and disabling enemy Dragon offense for allies. Even just blocking Poison, Sleep, and Paralysis for itself is a boon though, and allowing it to start using Calm Mind without being crippled would be a big deal. But it would also make some sense for Xerneas to get Grassy Surge instead. Flavorfully, it being an avatar of life does somewhat reflect growing a field of Grass that provides healing for allies, and it even appears in a wooded glade in the splash art of the game. It would also be a fairly unique gameplay effect, giving Xerneas a second Offensive typing and turn by turn healing. The fantasy and overall defensive properties in terms of gameplay make even more sense to me with Grassy Terrain, and while it definitely wasn't a part of the original concept, the idea of a Xerneas centralized around Grassy Seed + Calm Mind combo sets is much more appealing to me personally. Either angle has potential to me.
The big problem I am having with this thought, which I am guessing was also relevant to the designers, was fitting a dynamic with Yveltal and Zygarde into this framing. When introducing new field conditions, especially ones activated on Switch-In, it only really brings interesting dynamics when field conditions can overwrite one another and introduce push and pull. Neither Grassy and Electric Terrains really don't fit either of them, and being a Flying type anyway Yveltal doesn't really seem fit to usher in any kind of Terrain effect, at which point Zygarde would sort of struggle to find a way to be the negator of both of their things. Even if Zygarde utterly fails to act as a gameplay foil to Xerneas and Yveltal in practice, it on paper does have Aura Break which is designed to do something to them, and I struggle to think of a way to organically include a negation interaction for Zygarde without making something up entirely and without a concrete thought about fitting Yveltal into this thought experiment I don't have enough to build with.
For another tangent, let's talk about Dazzling Gleam. Can we talk about Dazzling Gleam? I've been dying to talk about Dazzling Gleam. I've got a corkboard with this move on it because I'm trying really hard to understand its place in the game.
Like a lot of moves which are newly introduced to a game as TMs, Dazzling Gleam was exclusively learnable via TM in its introductory Generation. It acts as sort of a gap filler between Draining Kiss at 50 BP and Moonblast at 95 in singles, and is almost comically unremarkable. But in Doubles, it is kind of randomly the premier spread damage move. 80 BP on a spread move is just respectable, but that paired with 100% Accuracy is downright unheard of. The only move which really compares is... Hyper Voice.
So there's a weird thing with Fairy Types in Gen 6. Sylveon and Mega Gardevoir were both introduced in XY with Pixilate, and Mega Altaria followed in ORAS. For Sylveon and Mega Gardevoir in particular, their defining gameplay trait is Pixilate boosted Hyper Voices, which alongside Gen 6 Pixilate do damage equivalent to an absurd 117 BP for a move with STAB; in later Generations the Pixilate nerf would see this be toned down to a still remarkable 108 BP. In Singles, this is strong but not excessively overstated. In Doubles, this is by far the best combination of Strength and Consistency for a spread move in the entire game, and is an extreme outlier of hilarious proportions. For context, Make it Rain was introduced in Gen 9 at 120 BP and 100% Accuracy, making it easily the strongest non-conditional 100% accurate spread move in the game, even if it did come with a -1 SpAtk drop downside. This was later nerfed to 95% Accuracy and a -2 SpAtk drop after use in Champions. In my opinion, Make it Rain at it's best was arguably still worse than Pixilate Hyper Voice is now at its worst. And at the time it was introduced, it was a tool exclusive to a handful of the game's very strongest non-Xerneas Fairies - Mega Gardevoir is the game's strongest Fairy type attacker even without considering Pixilate Hyper Voice, and while there are a handful of non-Megas which eclipse Sylveon's raw Special Attack, the power of Pixilate + Hyper Voice ends up higher than those Fairies' Moonblast against single targets.
Basically, I wonder to what extent Pixilate Hyper Voice on these Fairies and Dazzling Gleam were considered in relation to each other. It's not like Hyper Voice isn't the most obvious move to look towards when considering a Special Attacker with an ability that benefits from having Normal moves, Hyper Voice was distributed to everything via tutor in earlier games. With Eevee you can at least understand that Sylveon with Pixilate is going to be a postgame only Hidden Ability and will work as a midgame option to boost Swift or Quick Attack, but for Gardevoir there is not even a tertiarily relevant Normal type attack that is learned by Level Up or Breeding or anything - it's just Hyper Beam and Hyper Voice from Tutors. That has to have been the point. There is no decisive evidence on the order of the creation of these two game elements, but if I had to make a guess I'd lean towards Pixilate Hyper Voice coming first and Dazzling Gleam being a later addition when it was realized that anything without Moonblast would be left without effective Special Fairy damage, in particular with Togekiss which probably has still not gotten Moonblast for Serene Grace balancing reasons. It would also sort of explain why Dazzling Gleam was made so strong, because if it was being measured in comparison to these Pixilate monsters it would need to reach a pretty high bar to not look pathetic. Also Dazzling Gleam is very nearly the final TM in the game, TM 99 out of 100.
Anyway, if any of that is the case, I don't think Dazzling Gleam on Xerneas was fully considered because it is what really makes it broken beyond belief in Doubles. Geomancy is a potent boosting tool, but if Xerneas was only able to target one foe at a time it would end up a lot more handleable than it ended up, being more reliant on predictions and more suspect to outplay. Boosting Sweepers with Strong, Consistent Spread Damage are only really kept in check by requiring Speed control support and having a low damage ceiling, and Geomancy alongside Xerneas' over the top Special Attack with Fairy Aura just shatter that paradigm. And if it was overlooked because it was suddenly changed into a multiplier stack exploiting fiend from something with a less offensive ability, I would not be all too surprised.
TL:DR; I hate Xerneas because it is dead simple. I think at one point it might have had Grassy Surge or Misty Surge as an ability. I think Dazzling Gleam probably wasn't considered in Xerneas' balance and was a very late addition to XY.
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Xerneas is so incredibly depressing to me. The entire gameplay design of this pokemon in practice is just Fairy Aura and Geomancy. Fairy Aura as a damage multiplier on an already strong STAB type is a huge streamlining force on the design already, making any coverage move that doesn't actively deal Super Effective damage to a relevant foe completely worthless. Then Geomancy takes this already streamlined gameplay function and further streamlines it to the point of absurdity as it is rendered complete and utter 2 piece combo merchant with Power Herb. In singles it at least has situational benefits when running sets that utilize choice items, which by relative necessity run 4 distinct attacking moves, but even there it will often use filler like Sleep Talk or Aromatherapy to fill out moveslots because nobody is confused on the show they're here to see when they bring a Xerneas into battle. In doubles, it isn't even that vaired. You pretty much always run Moonblast, Dazzling Gleam, Protect, and Geomancy with the required Power Herb, and if the metagame produced something you couldn't bowl over with that exact set you sat in a corner and cried. I've complained before that I don't tend to like Mega Pokemon due to being restricted in variety by lacking an item and often being pigeon-holed into specific moves as a result of lacking an item, and Doubles Xerneas has less set variety than many Mega Pokemon in practice despite technically being allowed to hold other items. It is in my mind a significant step towards the general Offense creep of the game amongst legendary Pokemon, a line which divides the sometimes Offensive-leaning but usually just massively statted box-art legends of the older games from the BST Optimized, steroid boosted, deliberately manufactured, terminology juiced, big red button mashing modern game mascots. Even past beyond that trend though, it's not unreasonable to think that several of the future frontrunners were built to try and step up to Xerneas's obscenely high level or deliberately act as a metagame plant stopgap to it. (In XY, the only Pokemon above 600 BST that could resist Fairy attacks without holding a Mega Stone or Arceus Plate was Ho-oh!) Xerneas is at minimum a transcendentally defining gameplay design for the modern era of Pokemon, and I would personally go further in calling it the standout misstep.
But it didn't really have to be this way. When you take Geomancy and Fairy Aura out of Xerneas, you can start to see a picture form of a much more interesting gameplay design that could have been. Like for instance, did you know Xerneas has equal Attack and Special Attack? You'd never really think to see Physical Xerneas due to just how overbearingly dominant the influence of Moonblast / Dazzling Gleam / Geomancy is on Xerneas's gameplay but it does get Play Rough and has even teched moves like Close Combat and Rock Slide on some extremely rare occasions in Singles for Blissey and Ho-oh respectively. Even beyond just being a physical attacker, we almost had a little prototype Iron Valiant-esqe mixed attacker here with Moonblast and Close Combat as main attacking moves with a wide pool of coverage to pull from alongside decent utility and setup options. I wish that could have been Xerneas' ultimate focus, but I can also see that just pulling Geomancy and Fairy Aura out from underneath it does leave a bit of a void. There is room for there to be something special about Xerneas aside from just absurd damage numbers.
Another disappointing thing in Generation 6, at least insofar as it existed at that point, was Terrains. It's fairly easy to forget that Grassy, Misty, and Electric Terrain were even in Generation 6 because they are so completely disjointed from any relevance in any realm the game is played in. The extremely obvious reason for this is simply that the Terrain Surge abilities are not in the game whatsoever, but there were no Terrain Seeds or Terrain Extender to utilize for additional synergies, and the users of manual terrain moves are sparse in number, poor in quality, and lacking in any kind of disjoint from their type's respective flavor base to give some kind of reason to use them outside of needlessly stacking a specific type. Thinking about how depreciated Terrains are as a mechanic in Gen 6, I've spent multiple nights awake wondering about what Terrains were meant to be in these games.
So today, a rare day where these two brainworm addled thoughts have come together to haunt me over my day, I have a lot of thoughts on how these two game elements may have had a deeply intertwined and tumultuous relationship during the Generation 6's development. What if Xerneas was initially meant to have a Terrain Setting ability? What if the reason it was shelved was due to the awkward gameplay dynamics in the games' final legendary triplet? And what is the connective tissue between all of this?
To establish this, I want to first look at the effects of Terrains
- Electric Terrain amplifies Electric Type damage and prevents Pokemon on the field from falling sleep.
- Grassy Terrain amplifies Grass Type damage, heals Pokemon for 1/16th of their Max HP each turn, and reduces the damage of Earthquake by half.
- Misty Terrain halves the damage of Dragon Type attacks and prevents Pokemon from being afflicted with status conditions.
These design choices, in my view, are all made with intention. As much as Terrains ended up a depreciated mechanic in the final product of Generation 6, it's clear they were drafted in response to the trends of Generation 5. Two of the terrains directly address Sleep specifically, which was extremely strong in Gen 5. Grassy Terrain directly addresses Earthquake, which was especially notable in the wake of a VGC format in Ground type offense was especially dominant thanks to Landorus-Therian, Garchomp, Mamoswine, and Excadrill among others. Misty Terrain blocking Confusion and Paralysis are especially relevant given the near ubiquitous use of Thunder Wave and Swagger sets in VGC formats.
Electric and Grass type damage multipliers are largely just functions which make these fields worth setting, similar to Rain and Sun. (This was prior to the Terrain Nerfs, so they were 1.5* multipliers) Both do hold a small amount of contextual relevance as buffs. By the time of Generation 5 in particular a noticeable quality gap had developed between the Electric types that were not grounded and the ones that were. Even ignoring the inherent synergy in throwing off usual ways to check Electric as a type by detaching their defensive weaknesses from their offensive shortcomings, Pokemon like the Rotom Appliances, Zapdos, and Thundurus were just better than others like Raikou and Kantonian Raichu, and Electric Terrain acting as a tool to buff only the grounded Electric types without applying to the already strong Flying / Levitating ones was an important nuance. The idea with Grass types is a bit more loose, but a buff focusing on relatively weak Grass type damage rather than the already strong Grass type utility tools makes sense as a choice. (To some extent, even just applying to Grounded Pokemon was a notable choice - there were lots of powerful and defining Levitate Pokemon at the time!)
Which leads to Misty Terrain. Where Electric and Grassy Terrains give a damage boost to a relevant type, Misty Terrain gives a nerf to Dragon type damage... which Fairy, the type Misty Terrain is associated with, is already immune to. Being associated with the Fairy type and having threadbare flavor associations otherwise, the only pokemon to learn Misty Terrain without any extant connection to the Fairy type (to this day!) are Meowstic-Male, Alomomola, Volcanion, and the Quaxly line. As it would be used in Generation 6, Misty Terrain as a move is just... weird, complicated Safeguard. Today the Dragon Type damage debuff is third to using the move to cancel out opposing Terrain or activate an ally's Terrain Seed. At the time, I guess that would have been the selling point of the move? Without an attached damage multiplier to it, this move is uniquely useless, redundant, and obscure. I didn't really know how to understand it.
Then, someone pointed out to me that nothing about Misty Terrain requires the existence of the Fairy type. And that the Dragon type debuff portion of the mechanic would arguably make more sense in Generation 5, a game filled to the brim with game warping Dragon type offense, than in any generation afterwards... which all have the Fairy type, which not only directly fills the defensive function of taking Dragon type attacks but also does so without needing a damage reduction multiplier given they have an immunity, but also passively dissuades many of the greediest Dragon damage spamming strategies that were common prior to Fairy types existing. If the flavor disconnect was solved somehow, maybe by associating Misty Terrain with Flying, Ghost, or Ice types, the move could exist with 0 implementation issues and would be a reasonably fleshed out mechanic on it's own. That to me is a compelling idea! It's clear the design changes around Misty Terrain's implementation did not age well with the trends of the game, but such is the reality of introducing volleys of gameplay changes in bursts every few years.
This focus on existing without the Fairy type does lead me back to Xerneas, and whether or not Misty Surge Xerneas makes sense. Most obviously, it would be a very team-support focused ability, blocking status and disabling enemy Dragon offense for allies. Even just blocking Poison, Sleep, and Paralysis for itself is a boon though, and allowing it to start using Calm Mind without being crippled would be a big deal. But it would also make some sense for Xerneas to get Grassy Surge instead. Flavorfully, it being an avatar of life does somewhat reflect growing a field of Grass that provides healing for allies, and it even appears in a wooded glade in the splash art of the game. It would also be a fairly unique gameplay effect, giving Xerneas a second Offensive typing and turn by turn healing. The fantasy and overall defensive properties in terms of gameplay make even more sense to me with Grassy Terrain, and while it definitely wasn't a part of the original concept, the idea of a Xerneas centralized around Grassy Seed + Calm Mind combo sets is much more appealing to me personally. Either angle has potential to me.
The big problem I am having with this thought, which I am guessing was also relevant to the designers, was fitting a dynamic with Yveltal and Zygarde into this framing. When introducing new field conditions, especially ones activated on Switch-In, it only really brings interesting dynamics when field conditions can overwrite one another and introduce push and pull. Neither Grassy and Electric Terrains really don't fit either of them, and being a Flying type anyway Yveltal doesn't really seem fit to usher in any kind of Terrain effect, at which point Zygarde would sort of struggle to find a way to be the negator of both of their things. Even if Zygarde utterly fails to act as a gameplay foil to Xerneas and Yveltal in practice, it on paper does have Aura Break which is designed to do something to them, and I struggle to think of a way to organically include a negation interaction for Zygarde without making something up entirely and without a concrete thought about fitting Yveltal into this thought experiment I don't have enough to build with.
For another tangent, let's talk about Dazzling Gleam. Can we talk about Dazzling Gleam? I've been dying to talk about Dazzling Gleam. I've got a corkboard with this move on it because I'm trying really hard to understand its place in the game.
Like a lot of moves which are newly introduced to a game as TMs, Dazzling Gleam was exclusively learnable via TM in its introductory Generation. It acts as sort of a gap filler between Draining Kiss at 50 BP and Moonblast at 95 in singles, and is almost comically unremarkable. But in Doubles, it is kind of randomly the premier spread damage move. 80 BP on a spread move is just respectable, but that paired with 100% Accuracy is downright unheard of. The only move which really compares is... Hyper Voice.
So there's a weird thing with Fairy Types in Gen 6. Sylveon and Mega Gardevoir were both introduced in XY with Pixilate, and Mega Altaria followed in ORAS. For Sylveon and Mega Gardevoir in particular, their defining gameplay trait is Pixilate boosted Hyper Voices, which alongside Gen 6 Pixilate do damage equivalent to an absurd 117 BP for a move with STAB; in later Generations the Pixilate nerf would see this be toned down to a still remarkable 108 BP. In Singles, this is strong but not excessively overstated. In Doubles, this is by far the best combination of Strength and Consistency for a spread move in the entire game, and is an extreme outlier of hilarious proportions. For context, Make it Rain was introduced in Gen 9 at 120 BP and 100% Accuracy, making it easily the strongest non-conditional 100% accurate spread move in the game, even if it did come with a -1 SpAtk drop downside. This was later nerfed to 95% Accuracy and a -2 SpAtk drop after use in Champions. In my opinion, Make it Rain at it's best was arguably still worse than Pixilate Hyper Voice is now at its worst. And at the time it was introduced, it was a tool exclusive to a handful of the game's very strongest non-Xerneas Fairies - Mega Gardevoir is the game's strongest Fairy type attacker even without considering Pixilate Hyper Voice, and while there are a handful of non-Megas which eclipse Sylveon's raw Special Attack, the power of Pixilate + Hyper Voice ends up higher than those Fairies' Moonblast against single targets.
Basically, I wonder to what extent Pixilate Hyper Voice on these Fairies and Dazzling Gleam were considered in relation to each other. It's not like Hyper Voice isn't the most obvious move to look towards when considering a Special Attacker with an ability that benefits from having Normal moves, Hyper Voice was distributed to everything via tutor in earlier games. With Eevee you can at least understand that Sylveon with Pixilate is going to be a postgame only Hidden Ability and will work as a midgame option to boost Swift or Quick Attack, but for Gardevoir there is not even a tertiarily relevant Normal type attack that is learned by Level Up or Breeding or anything - it's just Hyper Beam and Hyper Voice from Tutors. That has to have been the point. There is no decisive evidence on the order of the creation of these two game elements, but if I had to make a guess I'd lean towards Pixilate Hyper Voice coming first and Dazzling Gleam being a later addition when it was realized that anything without Moonblast would be left without effective Special Fairy damage, in particular with Togekiss which probably has still not gotten Moonblast for Serene Grace balancing reasons. It would also sort of explain why Dazzling Gleam was made so strong, because if it was being measured in comparison to these Pixilate monsters it would need to reach a pretty high bar to not look pathetic. Also Dazzling Gleam is very nearly the final TM in the game, TM 99 out of 100.
Anyway, if any of that is the case, I don't think Dazzling Gleam on Xerneas was fully considered because it is what really makes it broken beyond belief in Doubles. Geomancy is a potent boosting tool, but if Xerneas was only able to target one foe at a time it would end up a lot more handleable than it ended up, being more reliant on predictions and more suspect to outplay. Boosting Sweepers with Strong, Consistent Spread Damage are only really kept in check by requiring Speed control support and having a low damage ceiling, and Geomancy alongside Xerneas' over the top Special Attack with Fairy Aura just shatter that paradigm. And if it was overlooked because it was suddenly changed into a multiplier stack exploiting fiend from something with a less offensive ability, I would not be all too surprised.
TL:DR; I hate Xerneas because it is dead simple. I think at one point it might have had Grassy Surge or Misty Surge as an ability. I think Dazzling Gleam probably wasn't considered in Xerneas' balance and was a very late addition to XY.
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Dark Aura on Yveltal ends up not being as big of a problem as Fairy Aura is on Xerneas for several reasons - namely that it results in Yveltal's design being pulled in several different directions rather than it honing in on one specific thing. Oblivion Wing is an incredibly strong tool with a combination of a reasonable 80 BP and a 75% HP Drain. But it being a Special Flying move puts it in a bit of an odd spot in relation to Dark Aura. While it can run Dark Pulse, access to juiced up verisons of normally medium power utility Physical Dark Moves like Knock Off and Sucker Punch are a huge boon, so it tends to be pulled towards both Physical and Special investment. As a result, you see plenty of Yveltal sets that leverage its Defensive and Supportive capacity, being a huge bulky pivot with Roost and Defog in Singles and being an incredibly hard to remove bulky Tailwind setter with Foul Play and Snarl in Doubles. It sometimes even drops Oblivion Wing - the other major restriction it has is not having a way to scale its damage, so it doesn't have a way to become a setup win condition on its own. But it still maintains a mixed 131 Attacking threat with a very hard to handle STAB combo and a small but concise set of powerful coverage moves, so it can't be disrespected as a threat in that capacity... unless Xerneas is there to walk all over it having a Defensive role. Are you starting to see the problem?
Also, did you know Yveltal is to this day the only Pokemon to ever learn Focus Blast via Level Up?
Also, did you know Yveltal is to this day the only Pokemon to ever learn Focus Blast via Level Up?
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My own conspiracy theory for Pixilate is that the devs kind of forgot to have a generic Fairy-associated Ability ready the way you might toss Static on an Electric-Type when you're out of other ideas. Of the other Fairies introduced in XY, Florges, Slurpuff, Aromatisse, Dedenne, and Xerneas are all running signature Abilities while Carbink is fully relying on its Rock type for Sturdy and Clear Body. Klefki has Magician, but it wouldn't work for Mega Gardevoir. So they copy-paste the code from Aerialate (the most necessary type-change Ability given there's no good Flying attacks it would make sense for Pinsir to learn), put it in the last two slots they need, and move on. I'm not even that convinced they were looking into it for Altaria later on: it learns Dazzling Gleam and Moonblast in XY and doesn't need physical Fairy options to win contests.
:XY/xerneas:
Xerneas has always felt like a very intentional inclusion to the franchise for me in the sense that it’s clear it and Yveltal were design to help try and balance out the restricted metagames of competitive play. Think about it- before Gen 6, what were the main two Types people thought about when they thought about big, powerful Ubers-tier Pokémon? That’s right- Psychic and Dragon. The problem begins with Xerneas’s base stats and Geomancy not exactly looking like the kind of thing that would synergize well together. If anything, something that boosts Attack, Special Attack, Speed would have made more sense on paper (think Shell Smash but with different flavor), at least to me. The other issue from a balance perspective is that Xerneas also has the typing advantage over the Pokémon that was meant to balance out the Ubers Psychic-Types, while itself still replicating the niche Psychics used to have of being the game’s primary check to Fighting-Types. Instead, we get what’s basically better Quiver Dance on Power Herb variants that turns Xerneas into a hyper offense stole rather than the bulky offensive utility role you would expect to see from the so-called Life Pokémon.
The end result of Geomancy’s design as a move in combination with Xerneas’s already existing traits is a centralizing metagame force that warped the game around itself. In fact, I can’t remember who first said this, but if anything it would make more sense for their roles in competitive to be flipped and Yveltal to be known as the more aggressive one. At least in casual play and single player environments these issues aren’t nearly as significant. I really respect the different angle Game Freak was going for with this duo and while I think they completely dropped the ball on Zygarde in Kalos specifically (the whole Cells concept makes more biological sense in a climate like Alola’s anyway), I just wish their first attempt at a Fairy-Type legendary wasn’t this weird clash between historic lore inspirations and a misguided competitive mindset.
Although, now that I think about it, since I wasn’t around here until after the XY Xerneas controversy largely subsided, I have to wonder how often people ran Close Combat on Geomancy or Choice sets. I would imagine Focus Blast was more common, but CC would have had the advantage of being a physical move with the better accuracy, which I feel like would have given it a niche for stronger special walls and more consistent Steel coverage like some kind of 3DS take on Iron Valiant.
Xerneas has always felt like a very intentional inclusion to the franchise for me in the sense that it’s clear it and Yveltal were design to help try and balance out the restricted metagames of competitive play. Think about it- before Gen 6, what were the main two Types people thought about when they thought about big, powerful Ubers-tier Pokémon? That’s right- Psychic and Dragon. The problem begins with Xerneas’s base stats and Geomancy not exactly looking like the kind of thing that would synergize well together. If anything, something that boosts Attack, Special Attack, Speed would have made more sense on paper (think Shell Smash but with different flavor), at least to me. The other issue from a balance perspective is that Xerneas also has the typing advantage over the Pokémon that was meant to balance out the Ubers Psychic-Types, while itself still replicating the niche Psychics used to have of being the game’s primary check to Fighting-Types. Instead, we get what’s basically better Quiver Dance on Power Herb variants that turns Xerneas into a hyper offense stole rather than the bulky offensive utility role you would expect to see from the so-called Life Pokémon.
The end result of Geomancy’s design as a move in combination with Xerneas’s already existing traits is a centralizing metagame force that warped the game around itself. In fact, I can’t remember who first said this, but if anything it would make more sense for their roles in competitive to be flipped and Yveltal to be known as the more aggressive one. At least in casual play and single player environments these issues aren’t nearly as significant. I really respect the different angle Game Freak was going for with this duo and while I think they completely dropped the ball on Zygarde in Kalos specifically (the whole Cells concept makes more biological sense in a climate like Alola’s anyway), I just wish their first attempt at a Fairy-Type legendary wasn’t this weird clash between historic lore inspirations and a misguided competitive mindset.
Although, now that I think about it, since I wasn’t around here until after the XY Xerneas controversy largely subsided, I have to wonder how often people ran Close Combat on Geomancy or Choice sets. I would imagine Focus Blast was more common, but CC would have had the advantage of being a physical move with the better accuracy, which I feel like would have given it a niche for stronger special walls and more consistent Steel coverage like some kind of 3DS take on Iron Valiant.
I can't help but feel this assessment is seriously understating Kyogre's dominance. It's possible the general assessment is still correct if we assume they were already intending to have Primal Groudon with a Water immunity, though.
Oh, it absolutely is. The thing is, Kyogre is just one Pokémon, and an argument can be made that Primal Groudon was made to balance Kyogre just like how Xerneas was meant to balance the Dragons. I apologize for not mentioning the Kyogre factor until you did because you make an excellent point; if anything, Xerneas is kind of like Kalos’s version of Kyogre in a way. Seeing as Kalos naturally shares a lot in common with Hoenn, the Water > Ground and Fairy > Dark parallel feels very intentional.
All I ask my friend, is that you don’t give Game Freak any ideas for a Fairy-immune Mega Yveltal.
Except Game Freak's balance tends to be aimed at VGC, not Singles, and the only notable restricteds in the former format at the time were Kyogre and Groudon. The Dragon and Psychic ubers of the era were (and still kind of are) bums in VGC. Even then, it really feels like Game Freak doesn't try to balance restricteds that much.
i feel like xerneas was made to be powerful and a fast cleaner because of the interest in elevating vgc to hyper offense, quick and decisive matches + wanting the new legendaries to be consistently used as they were annoyed that literally everyone else that wasnt named kyogre and groudon was a bum of some degree. zygarde was still a bum but xerneas and to some yveltal were successful and marked the new way to design legendaries in a way where they define the metagame.
the main mistake people make is assuming these design choices were mistakes and not intentional. they want these guys to be used all the time! and once their gen passes they want them to be secondary pics that dont overshadow the new mascots of the generation which means stronger and better stats to new legendaries.
the main mistake people make is assuming these design choices were mistakes and not intentional. they want these guys to be used all the time! and once their gen passes they want them to be secondary pics that dont overshadow the new mascots of the generation which means stronger and better stats to new legendaries.
Why would Dazzling Gleam need to balance out Pixilate Hyper Voice when most of the mons couldn't use Pixilate Hyper Voice in VGC until ORAS? Remember this is when they started adding indicators what games the mons were caught in specifically so they didn't have to worry about transfer moves. Hyper Voice was something they could only get by transfer from BW2 at that point. Why would they make a new move to compete with something that wasn't an option at the time?
Plus Dazzling Gleam isn't that late a move in the internal index. Bulbapedia, if it's to be believed, marks it as index number 605. It's right after Electric Terrain and before things like Baby Doll Eyes, Nuzzle, and Power Up Punch. It's a bit later than most Gen 6 moves, but not that far back that makes it seem like a last minute addition. There really isn't any reason to believe it was added late aside from conjecture.
Plus Dazzling Gleam isn't that late a move in the internal index. Bulbapedia, if it's to be believed, marks it as index number 605. It's right after Electric Terrain and before things like Baby Doll Eyes, Nuzzle, and Power Up Punch. It's a bit later than most Gen 6 moves, but not that far back that makes it seem like a last minute addition. There really isn't any reason to believe it was added late aside from conjecture.
These two expressions cannot be about the same Pokémon.
Ok so I completely forgot about this, which feels a little silly when I literally experienced having to transfer an Eevee from Pt to XY for Hyper Voice because I didn't own BW2 - I mostly played Smogon Singles at that point anyway. (Forgetting chronological transfer move legality is a frustratingly common part of doing analysis of what was going on in these games...)
But that also doesn't really stop my questioning as much as it opens up even more questions. Like if Mega Gardevoir didn't have access to the Hyper Voice tutor for XY... what was Pixilate even for on paper? Hyper Beam and Round? (...Return? With the +20 Attack Mega Gardevoir gets?)
From Martin and Stratos in their VGC 2014 Analysis of Gardevoir...
... this appears at the end of an article going over Base Gardevoir, which in 2014 was a major metagame threat with Choice Scarf, as a potential alternate option. That is the beginning and end of mentions of it. Pyroar, Noivern, and Gourgeist-Super were considered about as viable of options in this format that were about as viable as Mega Gardevoir.
I'm kind of just baffled then. Even considering it wouldn't have been legal in XY VGC, I still feel like Hyper Voice had to have been a consideration balance wise for both Pixilate mons because as an oversight it would be just that absurd. It isn't like Hyper Voice tutor distribution was cut in ORAS!
Yeah the TM number alone was always going to be reaching. But I think Index Order actually gives my thought about it being created after other Fairy moves more credibility than I would've even bargained for - Dazzling Gleam might not be on the bottom, but it is seperate from the cluster that contains the rest of the generic Fairy type attacks earlier in the list.
Also perhaps relevant to my theory... Grassy Terrain and Misty Terrain are side by side along with those generic Fairy moves, while Electric Terrain is much later on, adjacent to Dazzling Gleam... and very close to Geomancy. Which sort of, technically, could support the idea of Xerneas was originally conceived of in relation to those Terrains and was changed later?
... These straws are not very graspable.
For a mon that like Xerneas that uses attacks to deal damage, probably not. But I really don't think that Toxapex having 10 more Attack than SpA is why its stats are considered heavily optimized for its role.