Let's ban Hidden Power

Footnote

Footnote

BIG EDIT: For those of you just joining us, I'd like to rephrase my position on why Hidden Power makes Pokémon battles less interesting. This post of mine, #117 in this thread, is what I'd like you to consider when posting. Feel free to read the rest of the thread, but I'm hoping this'll be a time-saver for some of you.

Footnote said:
It's just a disagreement about what would make the game more interesting and what would make it less interesting. I believe that because of Hidden Power, a large number of Pokémon aren't viable in the metagame. Grass-types are the example I gave above. If you don't need Grass-types for powerful Grass-type moves, why bother with them?

Does anybody disagree that having more viable Pokémon and more viable moves make the game more interesting? And who is surprised by Hidden Power anymore? It's the norm, not an exception. What would be surprising is if people thought beyond the whole type-attack-counters-type-Pokémon and started using interesting support moves.

SePh, isn't Hidden Power part of the metagame? How is it used to counter the metagame, exactly? This is a zero-sum game. If Hidden Power "makes a Pokémon better", then it makes others that don't need it (because of a diverse movepool) worse. The number of Pokémon that lose in this equation is far, far higher than the number that win.

This is an oversimplification, but think of it this way. Let's play a special game of Rock/Paper/Scissors. In this version, Scissors have a Rock-smashing attachment, so now Scissors beat Rock and Paper. Gee, 2/3 of my options became obsolete. This game just got a lot less fun.

In case I haven't made it clear, I don't think Hidden Power is "cheap", and I'm not on a moral crusade. No ethics are involved here. Take it from me, someone who's experienced it: a metagame without Hidden Power has a lot more variety than a metagame with it.
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We now return you to your regularly-scheduled thread.

First, I want to make it clear that I'm not trying to be a troll here. I'm perfectly serious. Hidden Power is a game-unbalancing move that GameFreak should never have introduced into the games. Want proof? Almost every Advance moveset has it.

I believe that GameFreak is trying to balance most of the fully-evolved, non-legendary Pokémon (excepting those with 600 Base Stat Total and those with pitifully low stats like Farfetch'd, Delibird, etc.). Some Pokémon in Advance had great stat totals, but terrible movepools. Gyarados and Arcanine spring to mind. For example, the fact that Gyarados doesn't have a Physical Flying-type move is not an omission. I believe it is an intentional limiter on Gyarados's power to compensate for its other strengths. GameFreak has not always succeeded in this regard, but in DP it's clear that they're getting closer.

Now, I know there are counter-arguments against this. In Advance, many people felt that most Pokémon had movepools too small for them to be useful without Hidden Power. I had a certain amount of sympathy for this argument in Advance, but no longer. In DP, every Pokémon has so many good move options available that this is no longer an excuse. I think GameFreak's trying to make Hidden Power obsolete, but they have obviously not succeeded, as I hear talk of HP Grass Electivire and the like.

If this isn't enough to convince you, consider banning Hidden Power for this reason: on the cartridge games, getting a Pokémon with good IVs, the right nature, the right ability AND the right Hidden Power will take a long, long time. There are those of us who would gladly spend the time to do this, but there are many more who won't. Hidden Power means that those of us who are willing to spend ridiculous amounts of time will have a straight-up advantage over those who don't. Fair? Yes. But also alienating. Those that don't want to or can't spend that time may get sick of losing and not want to battle at all. I'm for banning Hidden Power because it will increase the size of the competitve battling community. Additionally, without Hidden Power, movesets may become more interesting and creative.

So please, at least on Wi-Fi, if not Competitor, consider choosing creativity over tedium. Is Hidden Power really so important anymore?

EDIT: For those of you interested in talking about the subject but not interested in reading the whole thread, I have changed my position regarding Hidden Power in Wi-Fi. I have been convinced that any such standard would be fairly meaningless. However, many have been supporting the idea of a Hidden Power clause in Competitor. So, if you have an opinion about that, post away!
 
I'm kinda torn on the issue, seeing as I came from kart battling and then to competitive, and not vice versa. I've never been too big on Hidden Power, but honestly, so much of battling has to do with switching that it's good to have a surprise KO once in a while (and, likewise, to be KOed surprisingly).

For one, Raikou wouldn't see much use if it only had Extrasensory or Shadow Ball as it's second attack, I would think. Not that that bothers me at all, but Raikou lovers (and most anyone using Electric or Grass types in general) wouldn't take too well to a "No HP" clause.
 
I was all for banning Hidden Power until I saw people like IMAWario, Uiru, and Peterko successfully breeding for it. Now I disagree entirely.

It's a good move on some things, yes, but it's not game-breaking and the fact is that it's certainly breedable. Jumpman16 just successfully bred a HP Flying 70 Gyarados, for instance.

It's not as widespread as you think; just look at the number of teams being posted and the number of Hidden Powers you see in the teams. You'll find that they are, in fact, very few, generally being on the sets of Sceptile, special Infernape, Electivire, and a rare other few special sweepers. It's really not a huge deal.

As you probably can tell by my posts, I am against almost all clausing
 
I think banning Hidden Power on Wifi is downright upsurd. As you mentioned in your post it takes a very very long time to get even more so if you going for the right natures and such, so IMO if your going to work that hard to get Hidden Power you should have the right to use it.

The metagame hasn't even started yet and I feel that it's entirely to early for a thread like this, perhaps in a few months when people actually have exp playing the D/P metagame, now is not the time for such a discussion.
 
Footnote said:
First, I want to make it clear that I'm not trying to be a troll here. I'm perfectly serious. Hidden Power is a game-unbalancing move that GameFreak should never have introduced into the games. Want proof? Almost every Advance moveset has it.

Yes, it's true. Hidden power is basically why we used Electrics in Advanced anyway.

I believe that GameFreak is trying to balance most of the fully-evolved, non-legendary Pokémon (excepting those with 600 Base Stat Total and those with pitifully low stats like Farfetch'd, Delibird, etc.). Some Pokémon in Advance had great stat totals, but terrible movepools. Gyarados and Arcanine spring to mind. For example, the fact that Gyarados doesn't have a Physical Flying-type move is not an omission. I believe it is an intentional limiter on Gyarados's power to compensate for its other strengths. GameFreak has not always succeeded in this regard, but in DP it's clear that they're getting closer.

You seem to think that Gamefreak really cares about the metagame. They could care less, actually.

Now, I know there are counter-arguments against this. In Advance, many people felt that most Pokémon had movepools too small for them to be useful without Hidden Power. I had a certain amount of sympathy for this argument in Advance, but no longer. In DP, every Pokémon has so many good move options available that this is no longer an excuse. I think GameFreak's trying to make Hidden Power obsolete, but they have obviously not succeeded, as I hear talk of HP Grass Electivire and the like.

Possibly, but maybe they really don't care.

If this isn't enough to convince you, consider banning Hidden Power for this reason: on the cartridge games, getting a Pokémon with good IVs, the right nature, the right ability AND the right Hidden Power will take a long, long time. There are those of us who would gladly spend the time to do this, but there are many more who won't. Hidden Power means that those of us who are willing to spend ridiculous amounts of time will have a straight-up advantage over those who don't. Fair? Yes. But also alienating. Those that don't want to or can't spend that time may get sick of losing and not want to battle at all. I'm for banning Hidden Power because it will increase the size of the competitve battling community. Additionally, without Hidden Power, movesets may become more interesting and creative.

Oh boo hoo, cry me a river that you don't want to breed for Hidden Power. Most competitive battlers breed for IVs, and they can sometimes find decent HPers. And Hidden Power increases creativity. You need to think of a way to use it to cover your types well.

So please, at least on Wi-Fi, if not Competitor, consider choosing creativity over tedium. Is Hidden Power really so important anymore?

On some Pokemon, yes. If you're just trying to do this so you don't have people that breed for Hidden Power, just add friends that feel the same way. KTHNX.
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On competitor I would probably agree it should be banned. It does give pokemon an advantage when it was meant to be disadvantaged. But on wifi I think if people want to put in the time and effort to get HP Ice Infernape or whatever than let them.

Ive been working on getting a decent HP Grass Elekid for about a week now with still no luck, so when I get a good one, I will for damn sure be using it on wifi
 
"IMO if your going to work that hard to get Hidden Power you should have the right to use it."

Works for me.
As a side note, Hidden Powers are only really helpful for STAB (if it lacks it, like Gyarados) or if it is 4x Effective on a particular Pokémon.
 
The first implication I thought of after reading the title was 'lol Rhyperior'. Ban HP and suddenly every single fucking Electric type bar the odd Raichu becomes a free switch in for it.
 
Surgo said:
I was all for banning Hidden Power until I saw people like IMAWario, Uiru, and Peterko successfully breeding for it. Now I disagree entirely.

It's a good move on some things, yes, but it's not game-breaking and the fact is that it's certainly breedable. Jumpman16 just successfully bred a HP Flying 70 Gyarados, for instance.

It's not as widespread as you think; just look at the number of teams being posted and the number of Hidden Powers you see in the teams. You'll find that they are, in fact, very few, generally being on the sets of Sceptile, special Infernape, Electivire, and a rare other few special sweepers. It's really not a huge deal.

As you probably can tell by my posts, I am against almost all clausing
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Although I admit that I probably won't change my mind about this, this breeding Hidden Power is interesting to me. I had not known that such a thing was possible. Could you please either describe how it's done or point me to a helpful resource so that I can see how long it takes?

I guess you and I take opposite stances on clausing. I think the Sleep and Freeze Clauses are great ideas, for instance. Otherwise, I'd spam Sleep to a ridiculous extent and battles would be a little less interesting.
 
Not in Wi-Fi, getting Perfect Hidden-Power's is living prrof that
You dedicate time to your team.

and its not like breeding is hard, c'mon my little cousin can breed stuff good (hes 8 yrs old) and he got a freakin' Timid HP Grass [60] Jolteon.
 
SuperSwampert: Ouch, man. You don't have to be a jerk about it.

Perhaps I should revise my position. What I meant to say is that, in battles between members of the community, using Friend Codes, etc., we could consider not using it. Obviously we can do nothing about Wi-Fi at large. And if nothing else, a thread like this may help those that don't use Hidden Power to find each other, even thought it's not what I intended originally. Possibly on Wi-Fi we could set up some way of separating teams that use Hidden Power vs. teams that don't. But, since I don't have DP myself yet, I'm still a bit fuzzy on how that all works.

As for being able to breed for Hidden Power: yeah, I know its possible. But I'd rather make 5 non-Hidden Power teams than 1 Hidden Power team in the same span of time. I reference Protege's week spent on the Elekid.
 
We should think of one thing; does it help the metagame, or does it detract from it?

Give me evidence that it detracts from overall variety and interest in the metagame and I just might agree that it needs to be banned. But honestly I just don't see how that could be the case.

As for Wi-fi, I couldn't care less because the people that take the time to get good HPs deserve to win for inputting that much time into it. And there aren't too many of those.
 
I just really do not understand why it would be considered.
Even playing people who breed like mad for Hidden Powers and not just IVs, the chances of you coming up against someone using a hidden power that is the exact power they want are very slim.
And I agree with the "If you've worked hard for it, use it" statement.
 
I Be Hungry said:
We should think of one thing; does it help the metagame, or does it detract from it?

Give me evidence that it detracts from overall variety and interest in the metagame and I just might agree that it needs to be banned. But honestly I just don't see how that could be the case.

As for Wi-fi, I couldn't care less because the people that take the time to get good HPs deserve to win for inputting that much time into it. And there aren't too many of those.
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You know, I'm starting to be swayed as far as Wi-Fi goes. The argument, "If you worked hard for it, use it." has a lot of merit. But again, those who are more interested in strategy than breeding for hours and hours may get turned off. However, there seem to be those of you who would be willing to think about it for Competitor, and that would be just as good as far as I'm concerned.

Whether it adds or detracts from the metagame is kind of in the eye of the beholder. In my opinion, it detracts because without it there would be more variety to movesets. I'd rather see teams working together with creative combos than switch-to-a-counter, switch-to-a-counter, switch-to-a-counter.
 
People have rights to HP just as they do with training for perfect EVs... it's just a great result of breeding for a long time

Plus anyone thinking exactly what something can do and shooting a perfect counter right back at it is stupid, Pokemon's all about prediction and not A-beats-B ._.
 
Footnote said:
SuperSwampert: Ouch, man. You don't have to be a jerk about it.

Perhaps I should revise my position. What I meant to say is that, in battles between members of the community, using Friend Codes, etc., we could consider not using it. Obviously we can do nothing about Wi-Fi at large. And if nothing else, a thread like this may help those that don't use Hidden Power to find each other, even thought it's not what I intended originally. Possibly on Wi-Fi we could set up some way of separating teams that use Hidden Power vs. teams that don't. But, since I don't have DP myself yet, I'm still a bit fuzzy on how that all works.

As for being able to breed for Hidden Power: yeah, I know its possible. But I'd rather make 5 non-Hidden Power teams than 1 Hidden Power team in the same span of time. I reference Protege's week spent on the Elekid.[/quote]


That's your choice. If someone wants to work to get HP then let them do it, If your a person that doesn't want to breed for HP don't bitch about it because you think it's unfair for those that work to get HP.

I must say what do you know about the D/P metagame?, how do you know what HP effects are going to be on the metagame? You don't. It's way to early for something like this to take place.

I will say this though I think it's perfectly fair to use HP if you work to get it and as you putting it" banning their hard work" is just crazy.
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Vidd said:
Oh, so they do care?

What's wrong with Hidden Power in this generation that didn't pose a problem last time?
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Nothing. It's always been a problem in my opinion, but can you imagine me saying this last gen? Nobody would even consider it because of the limited movepools.

If anything, it's less of a problem now. But, that's why I'm bringing it up. How many Pokémon really need it anymore? And, more importantly, does Hidden Power make the Pokémon that still have it much more powerful than they should be? Why not get rid of it altogether?
 
evolutia said:
That's your choice. If someone wants to work to get HP then let them do it, If your a person that doesn't want to breed for HP don't bitch about it because you think it's unfair for those that work to get HP.

I must say what do you know about the D/P metagame?, how do you know what HP effects are going to be on the metagame? You don't. It's way to early for something like this to take place.

I will say this though I think it's perfectly fair to use HP if you work to get it and as you putting it" banning their hard work" is just crazy.
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Perhaps you're right about it being too early. I apologize for that. I was trying to get a jump on this before everybody spent all their time breeding for weeks. But, I'm not bitching about the hard work. It would just be nice if nobody had to do it, rather than everybody having to do it.

Also, I have no delusions about everybody agreeing with me. I'm just trying to start a dialogue and get an idea for how everybody feels about the issue.

EDIT: Well, I think I've had enough abuse for now. Sorry for posting such a controversial topic. Just so you know, I have nothing against any of you who disagree. Thanks for your input. You all have some great points. Surgo, I hope you're right about it not being as widespread this generation. I look forward to battling you all. Perhaps I'll change my mind after some experience with the DP metagame.
 
Footnote said:
There are those of us who would gladly spend the time to do this, but there are many more who won't.
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Substitute "Hidden Power" for "max stats" and your argument becomes muddled real fast.

And for what it's worth, I just beat the Elite Four's sorry ass with my Base 70 Hidden Power Flying/DD/EQ/Taunt Gyarados three hours ago, and it felt great. I'm still really, really torn as to whether or not I should "settle" for 23/30/31/30/30/30 IVs, though, considering how easy Gyarados eggs are to breed. I feel indebted somewhat to my Gyarados for being the most awesome Emerald pokemon in the fucking world, due to being the pokemon that arguably most needs Hidden Power in its set — since Electrics still actually have STAB to work with — and actually having absolutely fantastic stats with a 172 out of 186 total IVs, but I know I can do better, so that's kind of ironic that'd be breeding inspite of having gotten the best HP already.
 
>_> I really, really wish I had the patience to breed long enough for decent IVs. Wi-fi is going to be rather unpleasant in that aspect.

How do you people do it? >_>
 
To be honest, it's enough of a time-sinker just getting good IVs, for me. I can't be bothered to spend that much time breeding in-game for HP as well. . . breeding about puts me to sleep as it is -_-;
 
I Be Hungry said:
>_> I really, really wish I had the patience to breed long enough for decent IVs. Wi-fi is going to be rather unpleasant in that aspect.

How do you people do it? >_>
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ANinyMouse said:
To be honest, it's enough of a time-sinker just getting good IVs, for me. I can't be bothered to spend that much time breeding in-game for HP as well. . . breeding about puts me to sleep as it is -_-;
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I'm glad I'm not completely alone here. My plan is to just use Pokémon that don't need Hidden Power to be effective.

Jumpman16 said:
Substitute "Hidden Power" for "max stats" and your argument becomes muddled real fast.
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My argument is less muddled if you know that I don't breed for max stats. I breed for good stats, and IVs are important to me, but I don't want to spend a week on each Pokémon I raise.

But just so you know, I respect you for being willing to devote that kind of time. I'm not trying to say that it was time wasted.
 
I'm gonna have to agree with Footnote; I'd rather get a team done in a week than one duder. I'm the kind who's more likely to spend rediculous ammounts of time on just planning my team rather than breeding. It wasn't even until I got Pearl that I started to care about IVs or Hidden Power, but the reasoning is obvious:

I want to be good.

So, in the end, I do try, but regretfully so.
 
I've been against HP for a while. Even back in the GSC days, when people first figured out how HP works there was a large rift over whether it should be allowed or not, and the reason was it was almost impossible to get the right HP 70 ingame. Granted, if someone does get it ingame then it's their right to use it, but I prefer not to use it myself.
 
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