Perhaps instead, they could do "the chance of a critical hit increase the lower the bst of a pokemon is compared to its target" giving those poor garbage pokemon like stantler or ariados for example some interesting tricks.
-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
-
Congrats to the winners of the 2023 Smog Awards!
Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
I feel like that also rewards Pokemon that already have really optimised stat spreads, which isn't necessarily a good thing considering that those, more than high BST mons, are the ones already used commonly in competitive battling.
Ah right, like mega beedrill for example. Hmm...just feels like they could do something else besides waiting a whole gen for certain bad pokemon to get +10 in a stat or a move it needs (plasma fists electivire)
What would need to be done to these specific examples (and any other people want to also throw in) to balance things out? Would they need to be individually addressed or is there one or two things that can be done (and if so would it be a new/buff/nerf/change to a Pokemon/Ability/Move/Type/Mechanic)? I have a feeling I'm opening a Pandora's box but hey, what better place to do that then on unpopular opinions (as long as we keep it civilized). ;)
Eh, let's not mess with Critical Hit mechanics too much. If we make them too much of a common thing not only would it make buffing up your Pokemon seem pointless but also Pokemon who are specifically made to be able to dish out Critical Hits more often would lose their gimmick. At most maybe spread Focus Energy and Laser Focus to more Pokemon.
Yeah, sadly that's really the only way a lot of Pokemon will get the attention needed to try and "improve" them (and even then +10 to a stat or getting a new Ability/Move isn't really that much). I do question what is GF's priority when it comes to "updating" older Pokemon & exactly what are the rules they impose on themselves.
The +10 stat boost was only in Gen 6. Gen 7 had boosts greater than 10 points. As for new abilities, Drizzle was all that changed for Pelipper, and it rose all the way from PU to OU.
These are some suggestions
Tapus: Make the effect of their terrains provide only a 20% boost.
Tyranitar: Either nerf Sandstorm's Special Defense buff or just remove Sand Stream on Tyranitar altogether. I swear, without Sand Stream, Tyranitar would suffer the same fate as Kommo-o, or at least something similar.
Amoonguss: Give redirection 0 priority in general. I always felt that its kind of cheap that you can simply lead with a slow with a Pokemon and have it simply use a move in order to redirect attacks, that effect is so powerful ( Geomancy Xerneas cough cough )
Heatran: Replace Flash Fire. It already has 11 resistences, losing one wouldn't make it less useful.
Landorus-T and Incineroar: Nerf Intimidate so that its like can only happen once per battle. Landorus-T would still have an enormous attack stat going for it, while Incineroar still has Fake Out.
Charizard and Weather friends: Nerf the damage output of weather to 20%.
These are just some thoughts. Of course, these are rather drastic changes, but its not common for characters in other competitive video games to receive drastic changes to the point that there not seen nearly as in future games. In Smash, characters like Meta Knight, Bayonetta, Cloud, and Corrin received considerable nerfs to the point that their mains have dropped those characters totally.
In Pokemon, GF seems to try to introduce new Pokemon has a way to balance out characters by introducing brand new Pokemon: Looking at the new UBs, all of them have an advantage over Fairy, which is something. But that's not a really a nerf, that's like an additional option to deal with.
Introducing options to deal with excessively common things is often a healthier way to "nerf" without completely breaking the Pokemon.
Sure we know GF likes to do both things at same time (Dark Void got directly nerfed on top of having 2 terrains that block it, queue talonflame memes, etc).
Also, once more, I remind you GameFreaks only cares of *VGC* and *BSS* as those are their competitive modes. They hit Talonflame and (Mega)Gengar this gen because they were dominant and sometimes antifun in VGC. Smogon is unofficial and doesn't really exist as far as GameFreak goes.
The only thing you can think would get some sort of direct or indirect nerf in gen 8 should really be Intimidate and/or Xerneas. In VGC 2018, there's been cases of teams with 2 or 3 Intimidates, 2019 VGC is seeing Intimidateroar and Xerneas as the most prominent pokemon (with Incineroar having demolished Lando-T's records as omnipresence due to its insane role compression for doubles). Though, they also led to the pick of several interesting countermeasures, I don't think we've really seen stuff like Stakataka appear as top 10 used, and we get to see interesting tech choices like Toxicroak, Bisharp, Milotic that specifically counter those.
My favourite way to soft-nerf Intimidate would honestly be have a pseudolegendary or legendary in gen 8 that runs Defiant or Competitive as ability. Kind of like Tapus' terrains basically discouraged the spam of priority or sleep without those having got any direct nerf.
I feel like a pretty reasonable intimidate nerf would just be making intimidate only hit the Pokémon directly across it, not both opponents on the field.
But why would Game Freak care to nerf Xerneas when the VGC format usually bans such legendary Pokemon anyway? (plus the trend of needing the new symbol mark of the generation and in the new region's Pokedex to be eligible for the format, keeping the Life Pokemon out until the next set of games at the very least)
[
They did nerf Darkrai, even though he's more likely to be banned from VGC than Xerneas
Considering that each origin marking ruleset has had GS cup, I wouldn't be surprised if they nerfed Xerneas if they keep that tradition.
Because VGC format actually allows Xerneas every 3 years ;)
It always cycles
Year 1: National Dex
Year 2: Entire Dex
Year 3: Entire Dex + Restricted Legendaries
The only Pokemon never allowes in VGC (but who get occasionally allowed in the rotating special formats of Battle Spot) are Mythical Pokemon as they generally are event only.
Indirectly, mind you. They nerfed Dark Void.
Granted, I know very little about the VGC format's nature, so I suppose things like Prankster Taunt or phazing it out with Roar/Whirlwind as it sets up may be extremely uncommon.
Still, Pokemon could use a Special Attack variant of Intimidate. Perhaps toss in a Special Attack variant of Hyper Cutter too if they feel the need to "balance" it out.
Phazing is quite rare, if Xerneas wasn't that popular you'd likely never see any phazing move run in VGC due to it being limited to 4 pokemon per team.
Prankster Taunt is very rare (the only real Prankster users you see in VGC are Tornadus and very rarely Whimsicott) but certain pokemon do run Taunt to stop Rage Powder, Trick Room and Protect shenenigans.
Diophantine
Banned deucer.
Gen 2 ingame is overrated. This was a childhood favourite of mine alongside Gen 3, but after playing it again I've changed my opinions on it. There are too many stone evolution Pokemon and not enough evolution stones - why can you only get them through phone call or in the post game? Attacks are also annoying to come by: Typhlosion learns Flamethrower at level 60, and given the lower level scales, you're likely not getting that until the post game; Rhydon doesn't learn any STAB moves until level 55 (later if you don't halt its evolution); Xatu doesn't learn Psychic until level 65, and so on.
Speaking of levelling, the level scaling is really dumb. Why am I going through the Radio Tower after having 7 badges and battling people with Pokemon level 25? Why are the wild Pokemon so underlevelled? Want to get an Ice type for Clair/Lance? Lmao Swinub/Jynx at level 23 is unironically your best choice and that's right before the 8th Gym.
Another thing I don't like about it is that they introduce a lot of cool Pokemon but don't make a lot of them available until the post game. Examples include Misdreavus, Houndoom, Murkrow.
Speaking of levelling, the level scaling is really dumb. Why am I going through the Radio Tower after having 7 badges and battling people with Pokemon level 25? Why are the wild Pokemon so underlevelled? Want to get an Ice type for Clair/Lance? Lmao Swinub/Jynx at level 23 is unironically your best choice and that's right before the 8th Gym.
Another thing I don't like about it is that they introduce a lot of cool Pokemon but don't make a lot of them available until the post game. Examples include Misdreavus, Houndoom, Murkrow.
My unpopular opinion: Psyduck is not a duck.
I also don't think Golduck qualifies as a duck, but that's not the focus for today.
First off, let's examine the features of real-world ducks.
-Their forelimbs are wings
-They have feathers on their body and wings
-They have a bill
-They have webbed feet on their hind limbs
-They have tail feathers, but lack a tail proper.
Compare this to Psyduck.
-Its forelimbs end with clawed hands (it does learn scratch)
-It has no feathers
-It has a bill
-It has webbed feet on its hind limbs
-It has a stubby tail.
Now, what real-world animal do we know that has all of those features? That's right, it's a platypus! Although Psyduck lacks the beaver tail or otter feet (and it also lacks the venom that most platypodes have), it certainly has more in common with a platypus than a duck.
I also don't think Golduck qualifies as a duck, but that's not the focus for today.
First off, let's examine the features of real-world ducks.
-Their forelimbs are wings
-They have feathers on their body and wings
-They have a bill
-They have webbed feet on their hind limbs
-They have tail feathers, but lack a tail proper.
Compare this to Psyduck.
-Its forelimbs end with clawed hands (it does learn scratch)
-It has no feathers
-It has a bill
-It has webbed feet on its hind limbs
-It has a stubby tail.
Now, what real-world animal do we know that has all of those features? That's right, it's a platypus! Although Psyduck lacks the beaver tail or otter feet (and it also lacks the venom that most platypodes have), it certainly has more in common with a platypus than a duck.
There are a lot of pokemon that don't quite match the animal there name suggests.
Donphan for example is so squat it's more a pygmy elephant than a true one, Dewgong is way too slender to be a manatee, apparently Electebuzz is supposed to be tiger of all things (according to Pokemon Go's Chinese New Year promotion), Kangaskhan has a pouch but nothing resembling a kangaroo (honestly Breloom is closer), the Poochyena line look more like dogs/wolves than hyenas, Drapion is more ant-lion than scorpion (and Skorupi ain't much better), Linoone is a badger and Zigzagoon is a tanuki but neither are raccoons, I can go on.
But I'm not saying Pokemon have to absolutely resemble real animals, honestly I'd rather get more all-original monsters than everything be "basically [some animal]."
Donphan for example is so squat it's more a pygmy elephant than a true one, Dewgong is way too slender to be a manatee, apparently Electebuzz is supposed to be tiger of all things (according to Pokemon Go's Chinese New Year promotion), Kangaskhan has a pouch but nothing resembling a kangaroo (honestly Breloom is closer), the Poochyena line look more like dogs/wolves than hyenas, Drapion is more ant-lion than scorpion (and Skorupi ain't much better), Linoone is a badger and Zigzagoon is a tanuki but neither are raccoons, I can go on.
But I'm not saying Pokemon have to absolutely resemble real animals, honestly I'd rather get more all-original monsters than everything be "basically [some animal]."
I would like to see more human-like Pokemon, but preferably ones that are not Fighting or already used, something more original. I have always wondered what diffenetrates a human and a human-like Pokemon actually, other than "can('t) speak and can('t) use moves".
Z moves were horribly marketed compared to Megas. A few of the reasons I can say people liked Megas is because of the anime and some older forgotten designs got an upgrade like beedrill, lopunny, ampharos. Even with the "dark edgy lore" of how painful mega evolution is, I also feel like Pokemon themselves don't care about that, since they ultimately want to win a battle.
But that's still more than what we got with Z moves. Wow cool they're leftover pieces of power from necrozma. The anime also does a poor job of showing off z moves. Besides maybe one or two times showing that you can use a z move to cancel another z move. It's just showing the Z move cutscene but in the show, not even any status z moves.
Theres also merchandise, and Z moves were complete garbage. Yay a braclet you hold and it makes noise when you use it. Megas got plushies, key chains, figures, mega bracelet, list goes on. It's no wonder many people want Megas back, z Crystal's are pathetic by comparison.
But that's still more than what we got with Z moves. Wow cool they're leftover pieces of power from necrozma. The anime also does a poor job of showing off z moves. Besides maybe one or two times showing that you can use a z move to cancel another z move. It's just showing the Z move cutscene but in the show, not even any status z moves.
Theres also merchandise, and Z moves were complete garbage. Yay a braclet you hold and it makes noise when you use it. Megas got plushies, key chains, figures, mega bracelet, list goes on. It's no wonder many people want Megas back, z Crystal's are pathetic by comparison.
Well, Megas were easier to market because they are Pokémon after all. How do you market a move, exactly?
With those extemely ugly plastic Z-bracelet toy things that nobody bought.
Quiet you fool! Don't you remember rule 34? We don't want another Gardevoir scenario! The poor girl has suffered enough!
Jokes aside it's interesting you mention that, as Yokai Watch is having it's own fan-crisis of humanoid versus monstrous Yokai, mostly centering around the popularity and/or spotlight hogging of Lord Enma. Personally I feel Yokai Watch is more cat-centric than human-centric, but I digress.
What a cat-tastrophe! It's purrfect mayhem! I'm not kitten you, it's a furry situation never seen before meow!
Digimon has also had this conversation too, as there's a trend that the strongest Digimon are more humanoid in shape (Wargreymon and Omnimon/Omegamon being the initial offenders) and that most truly animal digimon are either evil or lower ranked.
Heck, we even have this argument here with all the ones wishing for a quadruped full-evolved fire starter.
Granted I feel pokemon is way better than other mon-catching games at keeping a variety of body-shapes, after all the pokemon-God is a space llama (compare again Yokai Watch's Lord Enma). But from observation it's pretty easy to get into a pro-humanoid bias.
Guess if those dirty dirty humanoid ever muck-up the waters, we could always follow the Shin Megami Tensei method of human monsters:
This is Callisto by the way, the nymph from Greek mythology who Zeus seduced while disguised as a woman and Hera turned into a bear. And all that apparently that means shoes? I guess!?
Last edited:
Shoes AND a weird bondage theme, because if you're going to give up on what the original myth is about, might as well go all the way...
That's hardly an unpopular opinion. It may just be Smogon, but at least here it's shared by a laaaarge majority of people!
I really worry that the Pokémon team is running low on ideas in general. The UBs are the exception, but look at the recent starters, they all end up humanlike by stage 3. I don’t really think I’ve absolutely loved any recent designs or been truly surprised by a mon i the last couple gens. I don’t think it’s insurmountable for them, but it is concerning. We’re 800 mons in at this point, they may be running out of new stuff.