What type of Pokemon player are you?

What type of Pokemon player are you?

  • Timmy

    Votes: 22 12.9%

  • Johnny

    Votes: 95 55.9%

  • Spike

    Votes: 94 55.3%
  • Total voters
    170
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From the polls conditions, I guess I'm a Johnny, considering all I do with my teams is try to win in the literally worse methods possible. Hooray relying on luck for every move.
 
MagicMaster87 said:
I'm a Johnny/Spike mix with a slightly higher tendency for Johnny, and not only in Pokemon; it's the same in Yugioh and SSBB. I like to win, but I usually will avoid as much of the "top tier" stuff if possible. For example, in Brawl I probably will never use Snake or Metanite (sp? it's been a while since I've played unfortunately) while my mains are Kirby and Yoshi. In Yugioh, I run a Fish deck instead of the top tier Blackwings or Synchro Cat decks. And in Pokemon, I prefer UU over OU. I also like experimenting with different decks (in YGO) or Pokemon (in... Pokemon) and trying to make them work even though most people think they're useless or that there are better options (not so much in Pokemon, though).
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Wow, I'm with you on pretty much everything there.
NU Pokemon, Frog Decks and Ike FTW!!!
 
animenagai said:
Dude, you are being completely circular. At least for the only point that is slightly fair. I'm saying that it's silly to dismiss a Johnny or a Timmy for not being a Spike. Do I want there to be more Spikes on smogon? Of course I do, but if that's not what those guys are aiming for (winning), then I don't get why it would be a bad thing for them for not winning all the time. It's like you get a bunch of carnivores and vegetarians together and grade them according to how much meat they eat. W/L records only matter if you have Spike mentality. If you don't have a Spike mentality, it doesn't matter what your W/L record is.
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Or if you are playing in a competitive environment. Im NOT dismissing them, nor am I being unfair. Competitions are set up in a way that caters to spikes, so naturally they will excel. Timmys and Johnnys just aren't satisfied by that kind of self gratification the way spikes are. Much like Johnnys are the most likely to create teams that cause a buzz. Its as though you didn't read what I said at all. I said you have to be a mixture of things NOT JUST A SPIKE. NONE of these categories are good stand alone characteristics for competitive play. The only reason Spikes will do consistently better in competition is because more of them will be using cookie cutter teams. However, like I said I know a couple very good Johnnies, but they have had to incorporate Spike tendencies in their habits. If Im being circular its only because Im having to clarify something I said that you are not accepting or understanding.
 
Johnny.

Building original teams is indeed more interesting for me than actually using them, and winning 1 out of 10 battles is satisfying enough for me.
 
BurtonEarny said:
Or if you are playing in a competitive environment. Im NOT dismissing them, nor am I being unfair. Competitions are set up in a way that caters to spikes, so naturally they will excel. Timmys and Johnnys just aren't satisfied by that kind of self gratification the way spikes are. Much like Johnnys are the most likely to create teams that cause a buzz. Its as though you didn't read what I said at all. I said you have to be a mixture of things NOT JUST A SPIKE. NONE of these categories are good stand alone characteristics for competitive play. The only reason Spikes will do consistently better in competition is because more of them will be using cookie cutter teams. However, like I said I know a couple very good Johnnies, but they have had to incorporate Spike tendencies in their habits. If Im being circular its only because Im having to clarify something I said that you are not accepting or understanding.
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See, as I was saying, we seen to have a different definitions for 'Spike'. Your definition seems to imply that a pure Spike player will only use the standards. I'm saying that's not true at all. As megapants said, a Spike player isn't necessarily gonna be boring and rigid. Since Spike by definition only means 'gets your kicks by wins', I don't understand why you're adding this extra description to it. This is precisely why I'm not happy with saying that you need a bit of Johnny in Spike, because you're implying that you need creativity to win. I agree with that, it's just by definition Spike/Johnny means 'a competitive player who also puts a lot of weight into being original', and you don't need that at all to be successful. You don't need to put a lot of weight into being original at all and be giddy about it. You just need to be original enough to not be predictable, whether you like it or not is besides the point.
 
Megapants said:
I understand what you're saying here. It's true that in a competitive environment, you should be using Pokes that optimize your team and all work well together. But there are people who just get tired of the norm and don't care that much about winning.

For example, I make your previously mentioned weatherless team on Ubers. I'm mainly doing just to see how far I can go. I play it for about a week, and barely reach a rating of say...1100. Obviously that's pretty mediocre, right? But the fact that I've reached that rating with a completely gimped team makes me happy. That's the kind of player I, and many others, am.

And even then, you have players that want to do something different, but still like winning. Sometimes breaking from the status quo just plain increases the enjoyment value for the person. So now that I've decided to get serious with my weatherless Ubers team, I adjust it to make sure that it deals with common threats and it starts to win more and more. My rating has now risen to a decent 1300. This is a JohnnySpike. An innovative player who still plays to win.

Honestly, BurtonEarny has summed it up quite nicely. Whether you agree with him or not is fine with me, but I feel like he has done a fine job of getting the point across. :)
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Not using the norm does not equate to not winning, and I think this poll reinforces the belief that they are the same. My weatherless Uber team example was meant to highlight that the team builder probably did that just for the sake of not using the weathers, and probably didn't consider much whether he could have improved his team by including a weather. If this is true, he is intentionally limiting himself, an ironic insult to his supposed creativity.

When I read your OP, I got the impression that, in a competitive context, each "style" still at least has the metagame in mind. For example, the Timmy "find(s) a way to use this behemoth of epic proportions". Also, it's not like the Spike isn't "creative" at all. A so-called "pure Spike" can still consider mixed Jirachi and find that it works extremely well on his team (which is how it became a staple of my OU team). So I'd say that the so-called "successful JohnnySpike" is still quite primarily a Spike.

The poll has turned out to be quite predictably biased. Few people want to admit to themselves that they rely on extreme brute force on a competitive website. In addition, the competitive players want to assure themselves that they are creative (though that isn't really the point of the Johnny as I pointed out earlier), so we have the Johnnys and the Spikes nearly tied for the lead.

It still seems to me that the purpose of the Spike label (intentionally or not) is to separate competitive players from non-competitive players or even anti-competitive types. The so-called Johnnys who champion arbitrary restrictions like "NU only", and often make it their business to criticize everyone else with fallacious arguments, are put on an equal footing with competitive players who couldn't care less about what these rebels without a cause think. But in fact, if someone doesn't care much about winning, then the other alternative is that he's being "creative" for the sake of being "creative". But I have a Luvdisc on my team! That makes me creative, right?

It's the same thing as the science vs layman situation. A scientist can still try to shake up the norm but he/she knows to substantiate his/her claims to actually compete with the existing theory. However, a layman doesn't have that discipline and yet will hilariously equate him/herself to Einstein while making false claims about the scientific community, all the while justifying his/her argument with little more than "lol I'm creative and they're not".

I'll still grant that one can start off with arbitrary decisions like "I want to make a team of NUs to compete in OU". However, I don't see why anyone should consider it a stain upon the team's "honour" or "creativity" or whatever to put in a UU or OU Pokémon to improve it.
 
Megapants said:
Spike:

He uses Pokes that have been proven to be successful in some manner.
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This is actually a better portrayal of a Spike than the previous description. In magic, Spikes AREN'T that creative... they are primarily net deckers that go to tournies to win them. If they change a card in their sideboard it is cause for discussion. Spikes are fairly rigid by nature. They play it safe, and wont make a change they dont know to be better.

A quote:
"Spike is the competitive player. Spike plays to win. Spike enjoys winning. To accomplish this, Spike will play whatever the best deck is. Spike will copy decks off the Internet. Spike will borrow other players’ decks. To Spike, the thrill of Magic is the adrenalin rush of competition. Spike enjoys the stimulation of outplaying the opponent and the glory of victory." - Mark Rosewater, MTG.com (he helped come up with these profiles and named Timmy and Johnny)

Link: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr11b
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There have since been further classifications of these categories, but the article the OP addresses doesn't mention them.

There is 1 out of the 4 classifications of Spike that even closely resembles a Johnny/ Spike:

"The Innovater:
This group is the closest thing Spike has to Johnny sensibilities. (Although I should point out the Innovator Spike wants to win first and foremost; he doesn't feel any need to be novel or unnecessarily different.) Innovator Spike prides himself on his ability to judge new cards. His goal is to find the next broken thing. Innovator Spike's dream is to spawn the next dominant deck. He wants to break the game. And like Johnny, he wants credit. Because Innovator Spike is so focused on breaking new cards, he spends a great deal of time understanding the nuances of the mechanics. If something broke once, odds are greater that R&D will misjudge the same thing in the future. Because this group wants to understand how the game ticks, they are the ones most likely to be interest in Magic game theory. They want to understand things like card advantage and card utility because it is this intimate knowledge that's going to reward them later on." -Mark Rosewater, MTG.com
Link: http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr258

Here is some middle ground. 3 shallow categories are too broad to categorize something as complex as a human style of play/ motivation to play... they had to break them down to make the terms work better. THIS category is really what I have been trying to describe. He admits to doing this here:
"One of the biggest stumbling blocks is that each group had a clear stereotype that pulled focus. That is, when we talked about the psychographic profiles, we had a tendency to err in talking about one particular subset at the expense of the rest of the profile. That, I feel, is what I did in my first article on this topic. I oversimplified to the point where I reduced each profile to a stereotype. This has caused a number of inaccuracies and misunderstandings (one might even call them myths) about each of the profiles. Today, I'd like to set the record straight by doing a better job of clarifying each profile."
----------

This does nothing to change the fact that competitive pokemon is bad for the 3 generic types of players. A Spike by the original definition was rigid, and largely a net decker. However, they have since specilized the categories to make them less clunky and make them fit peoples style of play a lot better.

The innovator and the Johny/ Spike are really only different in that the innovator will always put winning first, even if it means sacrificing creativity. That isn't guaranteed to be the case for the Jonny/Spike who REALLY desires to be innovative to a degree.

CAPEFEATHER:
Largely, you are right about the Spikes. Before they had a name it was Timmy, Johnny, and Tournament Player.
 
I `m a spike. My goal in every battle is to win and i use the pokemon in my teams that i think will get me that golden WIN. Trust me johnny, it works.
 
I'm a Johnny and a Spike player simply because I take like to time with team creation and tend to enjoy showing off my skills with the finished product.
 
capefeather said:
The poll has turned out to be quite predictably biased. Few people want to admit to themselves that they rely on extreme brute force on a competitive website. In addition, the competitive players want to assure themselves that they are creative (though that isn't really the point of the Johnny as I pointed out earlier), so we have the Johnnys and the Spikes nearly tied for the lead.
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I do agree with you here, but poll taking is not something anybody but the voter themselves have power over, hehe. It's just as you said, people want to believe what they want to believe.

capefeather said:
It still seems to me that the purpose of the Spike label (intentionally or not) is to separate competitive players from non-competitive players or even anti-competitive types. The so-called Johnnys who champion arbitrary restrictions like "NU only", and often make it their business to criticize everyone else with fallacious arguments, are put on an equal footing with competitive players who couldn't care less about what these rebels without a cause think. But in fact, if someone doesn't care much about winning, then the other alternative is that he's being "creative" for the sake of being "creative". But I have a Luvdisc on my team! That makes me creative, right?
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You seem to think that being a Spike makes you an enemy of Johnny's or Timmy's because being a Spike automatically makes you "an enemy of fun and individuality." This isn't true at all. Every type of player's goal is to have fun in their own way. Spike may not always be original, but he doesn't care because he is winning, which is fun for him. Johnny doesn't care if he wins because he's being original, which is fun for him. It's all about enjoyment, not debating about who is right or who is wrong.

Also, please do not misunderstand, Johnny isn't a label that includes criticism. Just because they think OU is boring does not mean they are frowning down upon those who do play it. They don't think they are somehow better than you just because they are using sucky pokemon and you aren't. It's just how they enjoy themselves. And even so, not all Johnny's are gonna be sporting Luvdisc on their standard team. Some might try it, but using sucky pokemon doesn't mean they are being creative. A Johnny might try something more realistic, but still interesting to them, like trying to sweep with Nasty Plot Togetic or something.

I suppose there will always be people that bitch and claim "if we had both used NUs I would have won" after losing to all standards. But what are you gonna do about it? That's not a Johnny player, that's just ignorance.

capefeather said:
I'll still grant that one can start off with arbitrary decisions like "I want to make a team of NUs to compete in OU". However, I don't see why anyone should consider it a stain upon the team's "honour" or "creativity" or whatever to put in a UU or OU Pokémon to improve it.
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As aforementioned, there are always gonna be people who believe this. Which I'm fine with, but don't assume that every Johnny player is like that. Not everyone believes that their creativity is sullen because they are forced to use an OU or two to make their team work. Being creative doesn't always mean limiting yourself, but just trying to achieve a different goal than your usual teams.
 
Glad everyone is starting to get a better idea of what this is about. I will add the links that Burton provided, as they go much more in depth than my post does, possibly helping to clear things up a bit.
 
Well, I really have to admit I'm 80% Spike. I simply love winning. No matter how you put it that really sounds like the bad one of the 3.

For the other 20% I'm a Johnny, I love teams with stuff like Trick Room or weird setup; one of my favorite teams so far still is my Qwilfish setup team. However, if I see these teams lose too much I'll drop them. The amazingly fun Qwilfish team just can't do anything now Scizor is so popular.

And sorry, but I just couldn't resist.
 
animenagai said:
I see. I apologize for being dogmatic then.
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Its all good. :P

I also kind of realized that Shoddy is set up in a way that is EXTREMELY anti- Vorthos... it doesn't do anything for them because it takes out all the aspects of the game beyond combat, and even the animations are missing. They dont get to train their pokemon, breed, travel, or really anything that you would expect someone who is addicted to a story to want to do. I think it might be hard to find a Vorthos who actually likes the way Shoddy is set up. (remembering reading about Vorthos was how I was able to find that article btw)
 
I find that the group that I fall into is the Tuner Spike. I usually find myself looking at good RMTs and strategies and modifying them to fit my play style.
 
I'd say i'm 80% Johnny, 20% Timmy. I mostly use gimmick teams, but I also love the beauty of raw power. In fact, raw power and Trick Room teams do tend to be rather successful as there are many slow pokemon with awesome offensive capabilities. Also a team of Choice Band pokes is super fun, and although I only win about half my games, it's just so much fun to look at the huge numbers pop up.
 
Im probably the only guy who likes timmy's style. I remember making an all ohko and vhpsa team in my pokemon gold. With fishtauros starmie dugtrio kingler blissey and smeragal.
 
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