Unpopular opinions

Redmayo said:
•I think striving for perfect IVs is ridiculous. Sure, get stats suited for the set you're going to use, but do you really need 31 Attack AND 31 Sp. Attack? It's not like I battle competitively, but hearing everyone complain about not having good IVs is tiresome.
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1) It is SOOOO much easier now it is ridiculous. Seriously, you know how easy it is for me to breed perfect IV Pokémon? The other month, I decided, spur of the moment, to try using Rotom-Wash on my team. This was around 6 PM. I had a fully EV trained, level 100 Rotom-Wash with 5 perfect IVs (everything but Atk) before midnight.
2) That one or two points may not matter much most of the time (my Goodra's Flamethrower is going to OHKO Scizor every time*), but sometimes that can be the difference between a 0% chance of a OHKO to a chance for one. Or a 99% chance to OHKO into a 100% chance. And having that slight advantage in speed can help minimize problems in mirror matching. I'd rather my Excadrill have an equal or greater chance to outspeed an opposing Excadrill.
3) It is rare for someone to try to get perfect Attack and Special Attack. Unless it is a mixed attacker (like Infernape), we go for the stat we need. My current team all have 5 perfect IVs. My Scizor, Excadrill, and Gliscor don't have perfect Sp. Atk IVs since they have 0 special attacks. My Goodra, Sylveon, and Rotom-Wash don't have perfect Atk IVs since they don't have physical attacks.
4) You know what is also tiring? Hearing people complain about those who breed for perfect IVs. Trust me, it's far from an unpopular opinion. It's one I've heard way too many times. If someone as lazy as me can and will do it, it's not ridiculous.

*Okay, it is possible for a Scizor to survive. A Modest 252 Sp. Atk Goodra using Flamethrower on a 252 HP, 252+ Sp. Def Mega Scizor does 80.2 - 95.3%, but that's uncommon.
 
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On top of all of this, I actually ENJOY breeding for IVs. It gives me a low maintenance task that I can do on the 3DS while maybe just dicking around on the internet or some other similarly low maintenance task. Plus, seeing an egg hatch and checking its stats and junk is like checking to see if you win the lottery. It can be exhilarating at times.
 
Not sure breeding for IVs is popular or unpopular. Just recently tried my hand at breeding. I really enjoyed it until about the second box of eevees. Think the problem was I had a few too many variables I was aiming for (gender/HA/IVs). Still, really happy with the result and got loads of the little buggers that sell like hot cakes on the GTS.
 
People who complain about IV breeding in Gen VI obviously never tried breeding semi-decent Pokemon back in the days of Gen III-IV. It usually only takes a few eggs to breed competitive Pokemon now, unless you're aiming for a specific Hidden Power or something. Hell, if you have some way to backup/restore saves, you can breed flawless Pokemon in a single egg via Time Machine Breeding.

Soft-resetting legendaries/events on the other hand, there is more of a case there. I still have yet to catch a flawless HP Ice Thundurus in AS.
 
Xen said:
People who complain about IV breeding in Gen VI obviously never tried breeding semi-decent Pokemon back in the days of Gen III-IV. It usually only takes a few eggs to breed competitive Pokemon now, unless you're aiming for a specific Hidden Power or something. Hell, if you have some way to backup/restore saves, you can breed flawless Pokemon in a single egg via Time Machine Breeding.

Soft-resetting legendaries/events on the other hand, there is more of a case there. I still have yet to catch a flawless HP Ice Thundurus in AS.
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Well, I haven't played Generation 6 yet. My entire experience with IV breeding was me trying to get a Vulpix that didn't have an Impish nature, and finding a half-decent Eevee to evolve into an Espeon, both in Generation 4. I'm just sick of how many people complain about them in mediums where they can check the IVs, which I guess doesn't really matter for Smogon other than Generation 6, apparently.
And soft-resetting for Thundurus just for IVs? I had enough trouble soft resetting just to catch it in BW. Can't say it was worth it, either.
 
Redmayo said:
Well, I haven't played Generation 6 yet. My entire experience with IV breeding was me trying to get a Vulpix that didn't have an Impish nature, and finding a half-decent Eevee to evolve into an Espeon, both in Generation 4. I'm just sick of how many people complain about them in mediums where they can check the IVs, which I guess doesn't really matter for Smogon other than Generation 6, apparently.
And soft-resetting for Thundurus just for IVs? I had enough trouble soft resetting just to catch it in BW. Can't say it was worth it, either.
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Well at least RNG abuse was an option for the Gen V Genies (though it's the most difficult RNG to pull off in those games), but that's a different subject for a different day.

While on the subject, not really sure if this would classify as an unpopular opinion or not, but roaming legendaries were never fun or interesting. I'm glad the newer games have made steps to brush that trend aside. Tracking down the birds in XY is still unnecessarily annoying, but at least it becomes stationary once you actually begin to try and catch it.
 
Xen said:
Well at least RNG abuse was an option for the Gen V Genies (though it's the most difficult RNG to pull off in those games), but that's a different subject for a different day.

While on the subject, not really sure if this would classify as an unpopular opinion or not, but roaming legendaries were never fun or interesting. I'm glad the newer games have made steps to brush that trend aside. Tracking down the birds in XY is still unnecessarily annoying, but at least it becomes stationary once you actually begin to try and catch it.
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I don't think anyone liked roaming legends. They were absolutely awful.
 
I liked how Suicune was handled in HGSS. Kinda roamy, but in effect, not roamy at all. As long as I can save before a 100% guaranteed battle, I'm pretty cool with whatever they decide to do.

I also really like how Moltres has moved location so many times across games, even without roaming :V dumb bird keeps burning down its nest!
 
thdhted said:
I really disliked the roaming birds for X and Y. The fact that you have to chase them down several times, then go fight them is rather annoying. While getting to save before the final fight is nice, having to run around to hunt them down, just for them to run immediately is VERY annoying.
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Yes, especially the 10 times encountering as a roamer that are required for it to become stationary. I don't know about the rest of you, but once I've beaten the game, I usually spend a lot less time walking around through the tall grass, choosing to breed or battle or go somewhere with a clear goal in mind instead of wandering and exploring the region. After all, I've unlocked everything at that point. So 10 times is a large amount of encounters for me, and in the end I don't even bother and just leave it roaming. At least in past Generations you could first bring down its health, and then Mean Look and status it the next time you see it in order to catch it. In addition, you could even RNG roamers hexflawless and/or shiny back then (HGSS roamer RNG is surprisingly very doable, contrary to BW roamer RNG which is infuriatingly frustrating). I personally don't have the patience for Soft-Resetting, it's too boring. If I'd want to play competitive, I would be doing that on PS! anyway.
 
Gogoat is good pokemon and should be used more competitively. I know this because I got all the way to a grass c and e final in the tournaments room in showdown with a skiddo. Gogoat is also great on a monotype team and is one of the many gods of stall!

Gen 4 was the best because of sinnoh pokemon, music, evil team, story and champion. Alder is the worst champion (even though you don't battle him until later in BW) because of his 2 bug pokemon.

Malamar at is another good underrated pokemon.
 
But... Alder has 3 bug pokemon (escavalier, accelgor, volcarona). He was pretty easy to beat though (or maybe that's just because it was really easy set up with volcarona on his lead).

As for mine... Team Flair's goal is actually pretty interesting, though they tried to dumb it down too much with the grunts' childish "we want all the good stuff for ourselves." The whole fire theme is also a bit odd to look at. However, it adds a clever twist on flare/flair, goes well with the idea of fire purifying, and justifies Lysandre's awesome hair.
 
Actually I find Alder's backstory to be interesting. Thinking about it, not a lot of Champions really have that intriguing of a backstory except for the ones from Unova.

Lance started out a Elite Four member and rose to being Champion more out of Red and Blue not wanting the position. Now he did get involved with helping us take down Team Rocket's plan at the Lake of Rage in Gen II but not much else after that (except till HGSS gave us a Double Battle with us and our rival vs him and Claire).

Steven is a geologist of sorts though that's more of a hobby as he's the son of the president of a rich company. He's a bit aloof and like and as of HGSS likes to act the philosopher though he doesn't really have anything to him that makes him stand out besides being the Champion.

Wallace was a Gym Leader and Coordinator (and best friends with Steven) but not much else. His connection with Sootopolis City is more of a character, ORAS adding on that the Sootopolis people are some kind of guardian people along with the Draconids. But he himself not much even with the added relation to his niece Lisia and an unseen older sister (Lisia's mother).

Cynthia on the surface seems full of intrigue... too bad she won't explain why which gives her some Mary Sue traits as a result.

Skipping to Kalos, we have Diantha who I'm convinced was meant to be an anti-thesis to Cynthia. However that doesn't make her any more interesting, we're told she's a movie star but that's more of an excuse to keep her our of the plot.

But then we have the Unova Champions. Alder starts out as an oddball from the beginning. He doesn't look like a Champion and whenever we meet him its because he's just wandering around. Still he doesn't stand out from other Champions... until the end twist. During one of his defining moments, we see him having LOST to N and begging him not to go through with his plan. N than reveals Alder didn't earn the right to be Champion but rather he was given the position (and I forget whether he also mentioned Alder is a wanderer because he lost his partner, though if he did he never goes into details as at that point he's lauding over Alder). Later in the game we find him at Celestial Tower where he explains his first partner is indeed dead. BW2 doesn't go much further with his character besides showing he retired, does indeed have a house, has a grandson, and finally reveals his starter was a Larvesta that became a Volcarona before becoming ill.

That then takes us to Iris. While I wouldn't say she's as deep as Alder she does have much more going on than the average Champion. Originally from the Village of Dragons, she was picked by Drayden to be his successor after seeing potential in her but she had one request if she accepted, she wanted to become the Unova Champion. In BW we see her training with Drayden (battling her as a Gym Leader in one version) and then in BW2 she has finally become Gym Leader, us even peaking into her training to do so in some of the Memory Link Flashbacks.

While maybe not the best Champions, I do find them to be the most interesting due to how much of their backstory we know.
 
Pikachu315111 said:
Actually I find Alder's backstory to be interesting. Thinking about it, not a lot of Champions really have that intriguing of a backstory except for the ones from Unova.

Lance started out a Elite Four member and rose to being Champion more out of Red and Blue not wanting the position. Now he did get involved with helping us take down Team Rocket's plan at the Lake of Rage in Gen II but not much else after that (except till HGSS gave us a Double Battle with us and our rival vs him and Claire).

Steven is a geologist of sorts though that's more of a hobby as he's the son of the president of a rich company. He's a bit aloof and like and as of HGSS likes to act the philosopher though he doesn't really have anything to him that makes him stand out besides being the Champion.

Wallace was a Gym Leader and Coordinator (and best friends with Steven) but not much else. His connection with Sootopolis City is more of a character, ORAS adding on that the Sootopolis people are some kind of guardian people along with the Draconids. But he himself not much even with the added relation to his niece Lisia and an unseen older sister (Lisia's mother).

Cynthia on the surface seems full of intrigue... too bad she won't explain why which gives her some Mary Sue traits as a result.

Skipping to Kalos, we have Diantha who I'm convinced was meant to be an anti-thesis to Cynthia. However that doesn't make her any more interesting, we're told she's a movie star but that's more of an excuse to keep her our of the plot.

But then we have the Unova Champions. Alder starts out as an oddball from the beginning. He doesn't look like a Champion and whenever we meet him its because he's just wandering around. Still he doesn't stand out from other Champions... until the end twist. During one of his defining moments, we see him having LOST to N and begging him not to go through with his plan. N than reveals Alder didn't earn the right to be Champion but rather he was given the position (and I forget whether he also mentioned Alder is a wanderer because he lost his partner, though if he did he never goes into details as at that point he's lauding over Alder). Later in the game we find him at Celestial Tower where he explains his first partner is indeed dead. BW2 doesn't go much further with his character besides showing he retired, does indeed have a house, has a grandson, and finally reveals his starter was a Larvesta that became a Volcarona before becoming ill.

That then takes us to Iris. While I wouldn't say she's as deep as Alder she does have much more going on than the average Champion. Originally from the Village of Dragons, she was picked by Drayden to be his successor after seeing potential in her but she had one request if she accepted, she wanted to become the Unova Champion. In BW we see her training with Drayden (battling her as a Gym Leader in one version) and then in BW2 she has finally become Gym Leader, us even peaking into her training to do so in some of the Memory Link Flashbacks.

While maybe not the best Champions, I do find them to be the most interesting due to how much of their backstory we know.
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Knowing Black and White has such great champion backstories makes me want to actually try to finish my copy of B2, or even better get just the original Black or White.

Stupid sewers...
 
My big issue with the birds is that the 10 encounters that are ONLY to trigger the stationary battle seems like an unnecessarily large number of encounters considering you can't even battle them. Why not at least let us make the attempt, and then maybe have the stationary encounter if they flee too many times, even retaining the damage and such from the roaming encounter.

Also, my issue isn't so much IVs as stats differing the Pokemon, but the fact that they're basically static. Maybe if they were also trainable to increase, sort of like the difference between building muscle mass and increasing tone or resting heart rate or something.
 
I don't like how they feel the need to add new legendaries with each new generation. They blew their hand with Generation 4's religious deity-like Trio, and the useless human-concept Trio that existed solely for the story, and Arceus. Hoenn gets a pass for having these things be simply overpowered entities fighting for living space. Having legendaries that represent broad concepts and give the feeling that everyone acknowledges these things is a bit annoying. A lot of them don't serve a dire purpose in their story, either, even considering the mythos. Xerneas is Life, Yevetal is Death, and Zygarde is a stand-in for Rayquaza that feels out of place. Thundurus is thunderstorms (just like Zapdos and Raikou), Tornadus is tornadoes, and Landorus has a 4x weakness to Ice-type moves. Giratina and Kyurem were a lot cooler to find when their legends weren't chained to their counterparts, even though they made little sense for existing at the time. Can't we just reuse a few existing legendaries instead, and maybe have a different interpretation of them? Or better yet, have them not tied to the main story?
 
The forces of nature actually have to do with some concepts tied to the myth of the Inari whereas their therian forms are more broad, bird lizard/snake jaguar is pretty much the mesoamerican Holy trinity (missing the dog) and it ties in to other myths.

But yep legends are overdone, they are pretty much an outdated narrative concept since GSC, if they where a side quest and not a movie promo promise and excuse for plot in games we could get more exploration elements, but nope gotta have the mini boss fight before the last gym as always, oftenly accompanied by an experience drop syndrome like most jrpg after their third act, worst offender being hoenn water routes and Sinnoh walk to sunny shore and terrible level scale on victory road, it's not even difficulty, it's fake difficulty akin to HP exponential increase.

At least BW averted this spin by making a climatic boss fight followed by zone expansion and then improved gauntlet challenge.
 
Kurona said:
The glitches and bugs in Gen 1 are really overstated by a ton of people I find. Just about every major one (MissingNo., Mew) you really have to go out of your way to do, and I barely if ever come across a glitch or bug beyond those. RBY is not a glitchy mess.
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I agree 100%

I think the thing is that they're so accessible to the average person compared to other glitches that really makes them noticeable. Like, did you even try Tweeking in DP? That shit is insanely difficult. But in RB, it's just a the simple two step procedure you need to do to find Missingno.
 
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Darth Manaphy said:
I agree 100%

I think the thing is that they're so accessible to the average person compared to other glitches that really makes them noticeable. Like, did you even try Tweeking in DP? That shit is insanely difficult. But in RB, it's just a the simple two step procedure you need to do to find Missingno.
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Call me insane but exploring the void in DP was actually fun once you get your bike.
 
Kurona said:
The glitches and bugs in Gen 1 are really overstated by a ton of people I find. Just about every major one (MissingNo., Mew) you really have to go out of your way to do, and I barely if ever come across a glitch or bug beyond those. RBY is not a glitchy mess.
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As I've explained before, there are glitches, and then there are bugs, which usually cannot be avoided. Okay, there's an exploit to get Mew. Fine, you don't have to deal with that. But you do have to deal with Psychic being immune to Ghost and Focus Energy quartering your crit ratio. Stuff like that--which we knew at the time of release wasn't supposed to work that way--is my beef with RBY, not Missingno and company.
 
jordanthejq12 said:
As I've explained before, there are glitches, and then there are bugs, which usually cannot be avoided. Okay, there's an exploit to get Mew. Fine, you don't have to deal with that. But you do have to deal with Psychic being immune to Ghost and Focus Energy quartering your crit ratio. Stuff like that--which we knew at the time of release wasn't supposed to work that way--is my beef with RBY, not Missingno and company.
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Yeah but like, does it really hurt the game much? Okay, so one type matchup doesn't work as intended. Big deal. And I know that it's against the most overpowered type in the game, but come on, the only ghost moves back then were Night Shade which was fixed damage and Lick which is... Lick. It wouldn't have helped at all in any way, especially when Ghost was physical and the only ghost-type has jack shit physical attack. So in this case it's kind of a very small inconsequential oversight that doesn't matter.
And no-one uses Focus Energy so again, very small inconsequential oversight that doesn't matter.
These two show a bit of... can I use 'unpolish' as a word? That sounds like so wrong to me but I can't think of a better word right now. But at the end of the day if they were fixed they'd have about as much effect on the game as the Nanab Berry being removed and String Shot's PP being raised by 5.
 
Pikachu315111 said:
Cynthia on the surface seems full of intrigue... too bad she won't explain why which gives her some Mary Sue traits as a result.
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What do you mean by 'Mary Sue'? I personally think Cynthia was one of the best champions.
 
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