The amazing thing is that it took Game Freak almost 15 years to realize that maybe, MAYBE, restricting certain TM moves to one use per savegame wasn't a good idea.
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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
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The amazing thing is that it took Game Freak almost 15 years to realize that maybe, MAYBE, restricting certain TM moves to one use per savegame wasn't a good idea.
This might be less of an unpopular opinion and more just a general truth that people, like me right this exact minute as I type this, eventually learn but...
Actual Pokemon cartridge games aren't very good for us competitive players. Let's be real, NONE of them are hard by any serious metric. Fire type gym leader? Use Water / Rock / whatever. Dragon type? Fuck em up with Ice Beam. Mixed champion? Put literally the slightest amount of brain power into it and use intimidate + setup Pokemon to just sweep them with zero losses regardless of levels. When competitive players actually play against brain dead AI the only thing limiting us at all are levels and that's generally pretty easy to handle with the game's rock-paper-scissors type thing or if extreme simple strats like Toxic + Revives or whatever can break the game's toughest of challenges. Even competitive players rarely seriously invest their maximum into the games. None of us have ever EV trained or bred for an in-game challenge right? Even with a "good" in-game team we're never truly pushed to do anything more than grind. Frankly I'm at a point where I don't even enjoy the cartridge games. My point here? Well that's the wild world of randomizers. Despite the name Randomizers are basically just a custom ruleset that has like 8 pages of options.
As an example I'm currently playing Soul Silver with the following options:
-Opposing trainer / gym leader levels increased by 50%.
-Trainer Pokemon are randomized but with comparable BST... So Falkner will still get shitmons but Lance will be strong.
-Wild Pokemon are also randomized but still scaled by BST. Gift and "interactable" Pokemon are unchanged.
-Any opposing Pokemon level 30+ is automatically fully evolved.
-Pokemon movepools, stats, and so on are not changed. Only trainer Pokemon, levels, and catch locations have been altered.
My starter Pokemon were Larvitar, Bagon, and... Oddish. I actually picked Oddish lol because I figured it would be reasonably useful for longer, and status effects are strong. Probably the only time in my life I willingly turned down a Psudo-Legend for a weed. I think I made the right choice though as Stun Spore has absolutely been a game changer against opponents who at times out-leveled me by 15 or more. So here's the tl;dr version of my journey so far.
Oddish did fine pretty much up to Falkner. Early game trainers are so laughably under-leveled that even with a 50% bonus they were crushed under the mighty foot of Ass Kicker the Oddish. Sprout Tower similarly was fine. Again the low BST and level of G/S trainers made the randomization and level bonus pretty insignificant. Falkner hilariously replaced his level 13 Pidgeotto with a level 20 Luvdisc... Good thing I picked Oddish.
The journey from Falknerville to Bugsy was uneventful. I caught a Gible in the whatever cave and thanks to Dragon Rage cheese walked all over Bugsy. I don't even remember what he had. Also I was really drunk. Oddish Stun Spore + Gible Dragon Rage killed off whatever it was.
Goldenrod city had the legendary Whitney. I grinded every possible trainer I could and caught a Butterfree in the bug catching contest... and lost to a Venonat(?). I didn't even get third place! I forget Whitney's first Pokemon but her level 19 Miltank was replaced by a level 29 Rhyperior lol. Once again, Oddish was great. I still nearly lost to a Stomp flinch though.
Pokeathelon with a mouse and keyboard is absolute hell. I almost used my drawing tablet to play but I was concerned that I would get angry enough to break it. But you know. Gloom needs a Leaf Stone.
Morty on the other hand utterly team wiped me. Or should I say a random trainer in his gym with a level 30 Togekiss did... I took some time to grind through Olivine's lighthouse a bit before returning. I evolved a Gyarados and Oddish / Gabite hit their second forms. Morty's final team ended up being a level 32 Roserade, 38 Venusaur, 35 Pachirisu, and his final was a Qwilfish. Gloom completely swept him lol.
Instead of having two level 30 Magnemite Jasmine has a level 45 Altaria and 45 Bronzong, and instead of her lvl 35 Steelix she has a level 53 Ludicolo lol. Ice fang + Dragon Rage Gyarados beat the first 2 and Stun Spore + literally the rest of the team dying barely was enough to break Ludicolo. But like, I actually had to plan my attack. It's such an amazing feeling vs just "use dig twice, Surf the Steelix".
I still haven't managed to beat piece of shit Chuck as his first Pokemon is a Walrein with Rest / Snore / Ice Fang / Swagger. Gloom 4-5HKOs so I can't really break through Rest without taking a lot of damage in the process. So I'm currently fighting rockets in their Mahogony hideout to try and level a bit more. Most of my opponents are around 30-40 and I'm *barely* in the early 30s. My team is Gyarados / Gabite / Gloom with two HM slaves but I'm looking for a good steel type to round off the 4th. I'd like to run 5 Pokemon but I'm afraid of dividing up the XP too much. With just 3 mons I'm grossly underleveled as is. Each random trainer is about as strong as a gym leader and each gym leader requires planning to even have a chance to face. I nearly got team wiped by a Recover Milotic at the Lake of Rage. Just a random trainer nearly fucked me raw. Amazing.
Anyway with extremely small amounts of changes older games can be made ridiculously difficult and fun. I no longer have any confidence that Gamefreak can deliver a truly enjoyable single player experience that actually test my skills. And I don't mean that as a jab at Gamefreak not am I intentionally jerking off my own shaft. I think we, as competitive players, just have to accept that Gamefreak isn't making games for us. But that doesn't mean we can't have fun with the Pokemon formula it just means we can't expect Gamefreak to hand deliver it to us.
tl;dr version actual Pokemon games are very easy and criticizing a child's game for being designed for children is a waste of time. Just play some kind of fan-made game / program if you want difficulty. This whole experience blew my mind and I say with full confidence that the past 24 hours of playing a randomizer have been the most unstructured, difficult fun I have ever had playing Pokemon in single-player mode. I would almost push this to the point where between Roms and Showdown I'm not even sure what newer Pokemon games can offer us.
Actual Pokemon cartridge games aren't very good for us competitive players. Let's be real, NONE of them are hard by any serious metric. Fire type gym leader? Use Water / Rock / whatever. Dragon type? Fuck em up with Ice Beam. Mixed champion? Put literally the slightest amount of brain power into it and use intimidate + setup Pokemon to just sweep them with zero losses regardless of levels. When competitive players actually play against brain dead AI the only thing limiting us at all are levels and that's generally pretty easy to handle with the game's rock-paper-scissors type thing or if extreme simple strats like Toxic + Revives or whatever can break the game's toughest of challenges. Even competitive players rarely seriously invest their maximum into the games. None of us have ever EV trained or bred for an in-game challenge right? Even with a "good" in-game team we're never truly pushed to do anything more than grind. Frankly I'm at a point where I don't even enjoy the cartridge games. My point here? Well that's the wild world of randomizers. Despite the name Randomizers are basically just a custom ruleset that has like 8 pages of options.
As an example I'm currently playing Soul Silver with the following options:
-Opposing trainer / gym leader levels increased by 50%.
-Trainer Pokemon are randomized but with comparable BST... So Falkner will still get shitmons but Lance will be strong.
-Wild Pokemon are also randomized but still scaled by BST. Gift and "interactable" Pokemon are unchanged.
-Any opposing Pokemon level 30+ is automatically fully evolved.
-Pokemon movepools, stats, and so on are not changed. Only trainer Pokemon, levels, and catch locations have been altered.
My starter Pokemon were Larvitar, Bagon, and... Oddish. I actually picked Oddish lol because I figured it would be reasonably useful for longer, and status effects are strong. Probably the only time in my life I willingly turned down a Psudo-Legend for a weed. I think I made the right choice though as Stun Spore has absolutely been a game changer against opponents who at times out-leveled me by 15 or more. So here's the tl;dr version of my journey so far.
Oddish did fine pretty much up to Falkner. Early game trainers are so laughably under-leveled that even with a 50% bonus they were crushed under the mighty foot of Ass Kicker the Oddish. Sprout Tower similarly was fine. Again the low BST and level of G/S trainers made the randomization and level bonus pretty insignificant. Falkner hilariously replaced his level 13 Pidgeotto with a level 20 Luvdisc... Good thing I picked Oddish.
The journey from Falknerville to Bugsy was uneventful. I caught a Gible in the whatever cave and thanks to Dragon Rage cheese walked all over Bugsy. I don't even remember what he had. Also I was really drunk. Oddish Stun Spore + Gible Dragon Rage killed off whatever it was.
Goldenrod city had the legendary Whitney. I grinded every possible trainer I could and caught a Butterfree in the bug catching contest... and lost to a Venonat(?). I didn't even get third place! I forget Whitney's first Pokemon but her level 19 Miltank was replaced by a level 29 Rhyperior lol. Once again, Oddish was great. I still nearly lost to a Stomp flinch though.
Pokeathelon with a mouse and keyboard is absolute hell. I almost used my drawing tablet to play but I was concerned that I would get angry enough to break it. But you know. Gloom needs a Leaf Stone.
Morty on the other hand utterly team wiped me. Or should I say a random trainer in his gym with a level 30 Togekiss did... I took some time to grind through Olivine's lighthouse a bit before returning. I evolved a Gyarados and Oddish / Gabite hit their second forms. Morty's final team ended up being a level 32 Roserade, 38 Venusaur, 35 Pachirisu, and his final was a Qwilfish. Gloom completely swept him lol.
Instead of having two level 30 Magnemite Jasmine has a level 45 Altaria and 45 Bronzong, and instead of her lvl 35 Steelix she has a level 53 Ludicolo lol. Ice fang + Dragon Rage Gyarados beat the first 2 and Stun Spore + literally the rest of the team dying barely was enough to break Ludicolo. But like, I actually had to plan my attack. It's such an amazing feeling vs just "use dig twice, Surf the Steelix".
I still haven't managed to beat piece of shit Chuck as his first Pokemon is a Walrein with Rest / Snore / Ice Fang / Swagger. Gloom 4-5HKOs so I can't really break through Rest without taking a lot of damage in the process. So I'm currently fighting rockets in their Mahogony hideout to try and level a bit more. Most of my opponents are around 30-40 and I'm *barely* in the early 30s. My team is Gyarados / Gabite / Gloom with two HM slaves but I'm looking for a good steel type to round off the 4th. I'd like to run 5 Pokemon but I'm afraid of dividing up the XP too much. With just 3 mons I'm grossly underleveled as is. Each random trainer is about as strong as a gym leader and each gym leader requires planning to even have a chance to face. I nearly got team wiped by a Recover Milotic at the Lake of Rage. Just a random trainer nearly fucked me raw. Amazing.
Anyway with extremely small amounts of changes older games can be made ridiculously difficult and fun. I no longer have any confidence that Gamefreak can deliver a truly enjoyable single player experience that actually test my skills. And I don't mean that as a jab at Gamefreak not am I intentionally jerking off my own shaft. I think we, as competitive players, just have to accept that Gamefreak isn't making games for us. But that doesn't mean we can't have fun with the Pokemon formula it just means we can't expect Gamefreak to hand deliver it to us.
tl;dr version actual Pokemon games are very easy and criticizing a child's game for being designed for children is a waste of time. Just play some kind of fan-made game / program if you want difficulty. This whole experience blew my mind and I say with full confidence that the past 24 hours of playing a randomizer have been the most unstructured, difficult fun I have ever had playing Pokemon in single-player mode. I would almost push this to the point where between Roms and Showdown I'm not even sure what newer Pokemon games can offer us.
I agree that Randomizers can allow for new experiences, especially since the randomizer generators have been improved to a point you can make them fit up to what you want. I've never completed a Randomizer playthrough (because the game is set up to eventually make me want to use something I don't like) but it's some fresh air.
That being said, one of your points reminded me of something that I know is fairly unpopular...
... and it's that I don't like when ROM Hacks want to "balance" the official Pokémon. I mean things like changing typing, abilities, base stats, or learnset, or modifying the moves or abilities themselves.
I know they want to make the joke Pokémon viable (a pre-Sirfetch'd classic was vastly buffing Farfetch'd's stats and make it Fighting/Flying), but it feels really wrong to me... for some reason. And yet I don't find creating Fakemon, new moves or abilities as wrong as that.
Which is why I appreciate when "vanilla" options exist (say, the Drayano ROM Hacks).
Maybe it is because I disagree with the buffs themselves?
That being said, one of your points reminded me of something that I know is fairly unpopular...
... and it's that I don't like when ROM Hacks want to "balance" the official Pokémon. I mean things like changing typing, abilities, base stats, or learnset, or modifying the moves or abilities themselves.
I know they want to make the joke Pokémon viable (a pre-Sirfetch'd classic was vastly buffing Farfetch'd's stats and make it Fighting/Flying), but it feels really wrong to me... for some reason. And yet I don't find creating Fakemon, new moves or abilities as wrong as that.
Which is why I appreciate when "vanilla" options exist (say, the Drayano ROM Hacks).
Maybe it is because I disagree with the buffs themselves?
I agree. My friend introduced me to randomizers and kind of turned me off at the same time. His first match he got a Hydro Cannon Psyduck and lost to a Wonderguard Caterpie. His next game he had a Cubone and lost to Levitate Mawile. That's cool I guess but it barely resembles the Pokemon game I've known for most of my life. I'd rather play with what I know and fight strong opponents. I'd feel shitty if I lose to a Speed Boost Tyranitar or a Steel / Dragon Blaziken with Shell Smash. That's just not... Pokemon.
(emphasis mine)
I've been repeating this for the past year, I am glad you too saw the light at this point
Welcome to the club of reasonable people (for now)
The thing with Randomizers is that opponents usually have level-up movepools. In some of the newer generations, that might not be so bad, but level-up movepools in older games are often terrible. You can also run into problems like facing a Pokemon with dragon rage in the early game, which has no counterplay at that point. Using a randomizer to make the game more difficult doesn't always work in my opinion, because you're also randomizing the level of difficulty itself.
I think a nuzlocke is a much better way to make Pokemon more difficult. You don't have to change anything about the games to do a nuzlocke, so it's ultimately much closer to the intended Pokemon experience than playing with a randomizer. The enemies stay the same as well, so you can still plan ahead and train specific Pokemon for specific matchups, which is one of my favorite parts of Pokemon. This aspect is really rewarding to people who have good game knowledge. It's also easy to make a nuzlocke hard (heh). You can add extra rules like no-items, level caps or team-size matching. Actually, you can add these rules to a normal playthrough as well, which is also a totally valid way to make the base games more challenging without altering them in any way.
Don't get me wrong, if you like randomizers, that is totally cool. I just think it's not a very consistant and rewarding way to increase difficulty.
So, on the topic of difficulty...
For all the talk about how Pokémon is incredibly easy, and that Game Freak does not want to make it challenging, I kind of think not many appreciate how heavily customizable Pokémon's difficulty is, and that's something that should be noticed.
The immense roster is already a big factor on how your experience is going to be, and then you have all other sorts of restrictions (say, Nuzlocke) that the game allows you to do without much effort.
Out of the games I play, I think only Football Manager comes close to that.
For all the talk about how Pokémon is incredibly easy, and that Game Freak does not want to make it challenging, I kind of think not many appreciate how heavily customizable Pokémon's difficulty is, and that's something that should be noticed.
The immense roster is already a big factor on how your experience is going to be, and then you have all other sorts of restrictions (say, Nuzlocke) that the game allows you to do without much effort.
Out of the games I play, I think only Football Manager comes close to that.
RE: Increasing difficulty: Or you could just be a loser like me and make your own hard mode hack... With a bad base game. I like what we did with our hack, but geez fuck, Gen 7 loves its useless cutscenes.
For me, it's the opposite. I like seeing Pokemon getting changed and buffed. Why accept mediocrity in this case when someone else can do it better? Also nice to see what people can do with various Mons to make them stand out more.
My main problem with difficulty in rom hacks and just most fans suggestions is that most of them are just really fucking boring and grindy. They feel more like kaizos than someone trying to design a difficult game. When the only way to progress is just "bruteforce it with higher levels" then theres nothing interessing going on.
At least kaizo roms are transparent that their whole process is making the game frustrating and stupid, bordeline unfun for most, so the audience knows exactly what theyre getting into. Hell, some kaizo roms have better diversity and choice in the pokémon you can get and build for every gym than actual "hard roms"
Edit: something to add is that just increasing the fights levels isnt the only way that a difficulty setting ends up like a grind fest. Doing things like "the second gym leader alreadyy has extremely powerful coverage moves" or anything that is super hard/impossible to counter with the pokémon you can catch means that the only valid option you're giving the player is "get to a higher level and bruteforce it lol"
At least kaizo roms are transparent that their whole process is making the game frustrating and stupid, bordeline unfun for most, so the audience knows exactly what theyre getting into. Hell, some kaizo roms have better diversity and choice in the pokémon you can get and build for every gym than actual "hard roms"
Edit: something to add is that just increasing the fights levels isnt the only way that a difficulty setting ends up like a grind fest. Doing things like "the second gym leader alreadyy has extremely powerful coverage moves" or anything that is super hard/impossible to counter with the pokémon you can catch means that the only valid option you're giving the player is "get to a higher level and bruteforce it lol"
The main issue is that "adding difficulty" in a Pokemon games can realistically always be bruteforced by grinding.
The only way to add some ""non-grindable"" difficulty would be using gimmicks (like they've done for Totems or Ultra Necrozma), but even then, it still can be bruteforced if you really want to.
Unless Pokemon games introduce a true dynamic level scaling (aka, "boss" battles scale with your average level, making so that you can't overlevel them), or cap the player's level at given points of the story, they'll never be really "difficult" without just having the option to grind it out.
It's sadly a curse of Turn Based RPGs, unless there is a way to stop the player from overleveling, you always run in the problem of "grind to win".
The only way to add some ""non-grindable"" difficulty would be using gimmicks (like they've done for Totems or Ultra Necrozma), but even then, it still can be bruteforced if you really want to.
Unless Pokemon games introduce a true dynamic level scaling (aka, "boss" battles scale with your average level, making so that you can't overlevel them), or cap the player's level at given points of the story, they'll never be really "difficult" without just having the option to grind it out.
It's sadly a curse of Turn Based RPGs, unless there is a way to stop the player from overleveling, you always run in the problem of "grind to win".
Technically they can use anti-grinding mechanics that don't only apply to traded Pokémon. In one ROM Hack I once played (Pokémon Pyrite), instead of the "badge obedience" system, Pokémon outright couldn't earn any experience at all after a certain level, until the next boss trainer was defeated.
... but I guess that won't end up happening.
Ok so this is completely unrelated but I never got the hype for Wally's ORAS theme. I really like the dude but his music was never more than "eh" to me, the loop's just too short and the instrumentation feels a bit hollow as well IMO. Or maybe it's because the masterpiece that is Zinnia's theme spoiled me in regards to original compositions kek
If someone wants to bypass something by grinding, thats their problem imo. The issue is that these challenges only solution is grinding or massive rng luck with low rolls.
Grinding as one of the options is fine, some people are into that for some ungodly reason, but the point is more making fights that allow you to win if you do things like switch around teammates (would be a good use of the box mechanic in gen 8), use some strategy, etc. Like idk if a gym leader was a hyper offense team but had weaknesses like bad defense and crippled by status, and theres a very good prankster dude you can find if you search for it on a route, or a stally gym leader that hates pokemon who can just punch them very hard. Have the trainer face different battle strategies and adapt to fight them yknow?
thats a good option for ppl who want, but I dont want to prevent people who like grinding to not be able to do it in a vanilla game. have it be some kind of "mod" that you get when you beat the game, maybe add some other challenge mods like nuzlocke-esque stuff (rename it so it remains child friendly tho lol)
Yeah, I'm not strictly sure if I avoid this. I did have to redo the hack's level curve several times to get things "more right". I'm more satisfied with the current curve (of course, I'd also say that so I don't have to redo it again!), but it's probably not perfect. And I erred more on the side of preferring you be a bit underleveled than overleveled if I couldn't get the levels right. And some bosses, like the Totems and Kahunas, where intentionally overleveled a bit. Still, it's not like there's not a support net in wilds that match the Trainers' levels more. Combined with cheaper and easier to get Vitamins combined with easier to get competitive items and the like.
I feel like if it has some room for strategy, its not too bad. If you feel like having an issue with it being grindy, then instead of trying to redo the level curve again, maybe change one or two pokemon avaliable that would turn the fight a bit more fair for the player, giving an advantage to players who can strategize
This is a problem that plagues fan games in general, but yeah to be honest my experience with ROMs is that most of them end up delivering a worse experience than the actual games. Story, difficulty, and especially designs... playing them does help put gamefreak's disappointing performances into perspective. Game development is hard.
Let's be honest: a lot of ROM hacks tend to prioritize pandering to the random additions people constantly claim they want the games to have (e.g. all 151/251/386/493/649/721/809/898 Pokemon, excessive profanity, anime references, "hArD", etc.) over actually making a memorable or interesting adventure.
I sometimes see something like this as a counterargument to the common complaint of the games being too easy: "Yeah, but there's no good way to make them actually difficult". Not that it applies to your post, this is just a general observation vaguely related to the same topic.
On the other hand, if you invert the whole argument, one thing is evident clear as day: It's completely trivial to lower the difficulty of a Pokémon game. Just nerf the levels and movesets of opponent trainers. The only challenge in that case is to ensure the player earns enough Exp. Points to progressively level their Pokémon above those of the opponents. For all the talk about difficulty in Pokémon and how one has to turn to "fake difficulty" to make any given game harder, it isn't often acknowledged that "fake easiness" is not a thing.
With that in mind, it's evident that the difficulty level of the games can be adjusted. Making them more difficult, at least up to a certain point, is feasible by doing the opposite of making them easier. And I think this is what people complain about when they find the games too easy: a few certain recent titles have lowered the difficulty below what's reasonable. Measures such as small boss teams, opponent movepools tailored to be easy to overcome (lacking STAB, focusing on the wrong end of the spectrum, lacking coverage, etc.), an opponent level curve flatter than the player level curve, giving the player access to strong Pokémon that conveniently counter the next boss, other such things. It's unreasonable to ask for Kaizo-level difficulty in a game targeted at children, but it's not too much of a stretch not to want the foes to be configured to crumple up and faint at the lightest touch of any of the player's Pokémon either. Especially after the games added a "use this move!" box that tell players how to win rock-paper-scissors, next to the big, glowing, flashy "click here to win the battle" button.
There is a spectrum of difficulty between "click here to win" and "grinding for seven hours is your only option", and I think it's reasonable to criticize Pokémon for having moved a little too far towards the former. Difficulty-reducing measures have been applied while difficulty-increasing measures really haven't. I think it's feasible to increase the difficulty above the current level without being unreasonable.
I get what you say, on later games we got the buffed exp share which made grinding a non issue but also made the game infintely easier. It was common to see XY playthroughs ending with teams over the 70s, with the OP gift mons like the limited Blaziken event, Mega Lucario (one of the strongest megas ever acoording to this site), the Mega kanto starter, etc. ORAS and the free Mega Lati@s was also very questionable. I'd say SM and USUM had less of this trouble, specially because bosses had EV trained mons that allowed them to hit hard, take hits and outspeed your team; it made me hopeful of difficulty in later titles. Then LGPE came in with the obligatory exp share and SwSh with its broken raid mons...
I'd say grinding was almost never an issue at beating Pokemon games, as long as you know your type charts, the strenghts and weak points of the species and are well stocked, you can take on any foe, which is why "making Pokemon easier" is a baffling choice.
I have no problem with those games taking a different direction with anime-ish or grittier stories, but claiming that it's outright better that what GF is doing feels pretty disingenuous, since they also have plenty of mistakes in worldbuilding and storytelling. Tropes are not bad, it's how its executed that matters.
This is why I dislike Adventures Red Chapter so much. Unlike Reborn, Dark Rising, etc. the plot is held on their own world, but the Adventures romhack exaggerates a lot the "darker and edgier" aspect of the manga. The characters feel very derailed, the later quests were so gory and dumb (the Orange Leaders being the worst offenders), by the end it seems like a mishmash of every bad fan theory while still taking it completely seriously.
To end in a more positive note, I admit even my favorite romhacks (Vega, Prism) and fangames (Uranium, Legends of the arena) had its fair share of flaws, but because game developing is hard it feels pretty rewarding to play a fangame or romhack that manages to satisfy you like the official games do.
As I repeated a few times, everyone's experience with Dynamax Adventures (and honestly, event raids in the past) has clearly shown that on average, this is not common knowledge in the playerbase.
Plus, even veterans aren't necessarily going to have every single type interaction memorized. I for the longest time did not realize Rock doesn't resist itself, to give an example.
Oh you'll hate this in my hack
Normal neutral against Steel? That's an interesting choice.
Also, Bug losing the SE against Poison was a mistake.
To be fair, poison would have been even worse in the early gens if it was also weak to bug. The real mistake was making fairy resist bug for no reason.
I have always thought that an interesting way to make poison 'better' is to introduce an interaction with the water type. I think it would be cool if poison and water were super effective against each other, as a reference to water polution. We don't have any interaction like that in the type chart right now, which is a missed opportunity in my opinion. The closest thing is bug and fighting resisting each other, or maybe ghost and dragon being super effective against themselves, but this isn't quite the same thing as two different types being super-effective against each other.