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How you would fix and/or balance the metagame for the next generation, and why?
- Thread starter DR. KOEN
- Start date
Here's what I'd do: clean slate.
It's obvious that at this point, the game cannot really be balanced anymore. To overthrow the massive forces we have now both due to moves and Pokemon being as close to broken as they can get, all you can do otherwise is add even stronger Pokemon, and that just gets you in the endless loop. Plus, if you introduce a hundred new Pokemon every time, things get even more on "team building chance" than they are now: the problem was there in ADV, and it is certainly my hugest problem with DP.
Maybe import a few "innocent" Pokemon from previous generations, but I'd say most of them have seen enough action as it is. If you start from clean, you can work on a balance from the start, as opposed to repeatedly add things to nerf one Pokemon and boost another.
For moves, I would take out/nerf:
- Draco Meteor (100 BP is plenty methinks)
- Stealth Rock (halve its damage, or cap damage at 25%)
- Spikes (back to 1 or maybe use 2 layers)
- Toxic Spikes (fuck off)
- Close Combat (even with 90 BP this is the best Fighting move, lol)
- Outrage (~_~)
- Baton Pass (sorry but no thanks)
- Double Team (so the debates go away)
I might be too obsessed with balance but I think at this point, with ~500 Pokemon available, "more is less". We've seen the Blissey line for long enough now and I daresay the same goes for Garchomp.
It's obvious that at this point, the game cannot really be balanced anymore. To overthrow the massive forces we have now both due to moves and Pokemon being as close to broken as they can get, all you can do otherwise is add even stronger Pokemon, and that just gets you in the endless loop. Plus, if you introduce a hundred new Pokemon every time, things get even more on "team building chance" than they are now: the problem was there in ADV, and it is certainly my hugest problem with DP.
Maybe import a few "innocent" Pokemon from previous generations, but I'd say most of them have seen enough action as it is. If you start from clean, you can work on a balance from the start, as opposed to repeatedly add things to nerf one Pokemon and boost another.
For moves, I would take out/nerf:
- Draco Meteor (100 BP is plenty methinks)
- Stealth Rock (halve its damage, or cap damage at 25%)
- Spikes (back to 1 or maybe use 2 layers)
- Toxic Spikes (fuck off)
- Close Combat (even with 90 BP this is the best Fighting move, lol)
- Outrage (~_~)
- Baton Pass (sorry but no thanks)
- Double Team (so the debates go away)
I might be too obsessed with balance but I think at this point, with ~500 Pokemon available, "more is less". We've seen the Blissey line for long enough now and I daresay the same goes for Garchomp.
Out of the entire possibilites at our disposal, you're hoping that this gets a nudge? I don't want to see this for sure, let it stay at random for all I care. Heck, take the Freeze down to a max of 5 turns.
I forgot about giving Snorlax Slack Off, oh the love he'd get with that move!
People want to see Ice actually resist something other than itself and Poison actually hit something other than Grass for super effective?
Do what they did last gen, and give new evolutions, stats, moves, or "Light Ball"-ish items to some of the more outclassed fellows to make them more viable.
I really like this idea. Unfortunately, Nintendo won't do that. Each Pokemon and attack design is worth $$ to them, literally. It took programmers, pixel-artists, designers and sound-effect artists to create the finished product. They invested too much into each pokemon to start trimming down the game.
I do think the game has gotten too big. In all honesty, I'd like to see a mod-server take this approach. Contrast to the AA approach... instead of adding new features into the metagame to rebalance, we could simply do slight tweeks to the metagame and focus on a core set of ~60 pokemon to truly balance the game.
Not saying AA's approach is wrong, his server is quite interesting :-) (auto-rapid spin ability, stealth rocks modification, team-Eevee abilities... ditto arguably being OU material :-p ) But it is not the same feel and is a big jump from the current metagame.
Lets be honest here: 500 pokemon is enough for diversity. The problem now is that a few select pokemon aren't making the game diverse enough. Here is what I'd do:
1. I'd systematically balance theme teams. Sunny Day requires a lot of boosts, Rain Dance is close to usable but needs a bit of improvement. Hail and Sandstorm are fine as they are. From there, I'd add more theme type strategies... beat-up has potential for an all physical team. It needs to be improved. Tailwind needs to become a full weather effect (knocking out hail, sandstorm, etc. etc.) last 5 turns and have an item that boosts it to 8.
Some initial ideas are to turn "leaf guard" into a "hydration" like effect in Sunny Day (as opposed to safeguard-like), boost more Grass Attacks than just SolarBeam, and turn Sunny-day based healing into 40% minimum, 50% w/o weather, and 66% with weather. Honestly, Sunny Day teams get raped by all 3 other weathers because Moonlight / etc. etc. drop down to friggen 25%... Up the PP of those healing attacks to 10 pp.
Both Drizzle and Drought need to come to OU play. I'm thinking politoed.
A few dual-weather teams should be usable to take advantage of Castform and Roserade's Weather Ball, as well as cool combos like Blizzard / Thunder. Obviously, hard to pull off, but not impossible.
2. "Early Game Over" and "NPC like feel" need to get out of the game. Baton-pass teams win after maybe... 10 turns if they last that long. The next 20 turns are them beefing up their attack enough so that they can actually sweep. Each turn should be a battle. "Short" Baton Pass teams seem to be very balanced, with their share of bad effects, but deep 10 turn Baton Pass teams are no fun to play against once it is clear that you've lost. To that effect, maybe each +2 boost lasts only 5 turns, while +1 boosts last forever. Calm Mind, Bulk Up, Cosmic Power and Dragon Dance count as +2 boosts. Meditate, Defense Curl, etc. etc. are +1 boosts.
3. Merge items together. We don't need 2 ways to boost your attack by 20%, we don't need a different rock for each weather. I think the plates might have to go up to a 30% boost, and Muscle Band and Wise Glasses up to 20% boost in power. Leftovers, Life Orb, Choice Band, Choice Specs are too common, make the other guys a bit stronger.
4. Hyper-beam attacks should actually be worth using. Knock all of them up to 200+ BP at least, maybe more depending on testing. They have a cool mechanic, but it isn't worth using them at the moment.
You could put them to RBY level where they don't need to recharge if you OHKO, but that gives an Outrage-like feel that I'd rather avoid, given that you want to balance things. They really aren't much but bad Explosions learned by other things, so they need radical changes to be useful without being broken.
is there somewhere that lists all the changes AA has made to his server? those sound interesting.
what about trick room, gravity and fog? ok fog canot be used exept ingame but what about the other two?
i moon light not the rain healing move? morning sun is the sunny day one i think. anyway all those sound like interesting ideas.
i am not sure about this one, sun and rain are much better weathers to base a team around and could overcentrilise the metagame. maybe if the pokemon that had those abilitys where EXTREMELY weak? or the weather only lasted 5-8 turns after the pokemon with the ability switches out?
i kinda agree with this, but BP teams do not overcentrilise as they have only a small chance of starting sucsesfuly.
i dont like this idea, 5 turns is too short. maybe have it so BP'd boosts wear off after 5 or better 8 turns but self stat upers should be able to keep their boosts.
agreed, what about expert belt? 30% boost? and how about defence boosting items? i had an idea for the bad efect as choice would not work well on walls. rases phy. defence by 50% lowers sp. defence by 30-50% (not sure how much to lower) and anothr item that rases sp. def and lowers phy. def. also choice defence items could be added.
maybe... it would make full stall all but imposible wen combined with say a nasty plotter.
The last time they did that with Ru/Sa, the games had the worst sales figures out of the entire Pokemon series and I don't think they'll be giving up money to please the competitive crowd. Not being able to trade between generations is a big turn off to fans.
This generation is just as restricted by powerhouses as R/B/Y was, if you look at the pool of usable OU in both generations. It just seems more broken because almost everything, including the 600 club, has improved in movepool and power across the board (except Flareon that is).
I agree that Blissey is too used in every generation but all they'd have to do to alleviate that is give Empoleon roost or Snorlax slack off, and while 2 viable alternatives wouldn't completely eliminate her, they'd fill the special wall role quite nicely while fitting better than Blissey on certain teams. To nerf stealth rock, simply add way more spinners and make an auto-spin Pokemon. You can fix almost all balance problems by adding things.
One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet, but came up in a conversation recently:
Ability switching.
Hands up if you've bred a Starmie that's 28+ for IVs in all five relevant stats but has Illuminate. I'd like to see a NPC that will take a Heart Scale, two TinyMushrooms, $5000, whatever to perform a one-time switch of a Pokemon's ability.
It might be a minor thing, but I'd like to be able to have things like a Poison Heal Breloom with Thunderpunch. To that end, I'd also like to see more diversity in that regard - if the next legendary trio have the same ability and it's Levitate or Pressure, I'm going to break a developer's legs.
Ability switching.
Hands up if you've bred a Starmie that's 28+ for IVs in all five relevant stats but has Illuminate. I'd like to see a NPC that will take a Heart Scale, two TinyMushrooms, $5000, whatever to perform a one-time switch of a Pokemon's ability.
It might be a minor thing, but I'd like to be able to have things like a Poison Heal Breloom with Thunderpunch. To that end, I'd also like to see more diversity in that regard - if the next legendary trio have the same ability and it's Levitate or Pressure, I'm going to break a developer's legs.
I too, would like to see Hyper Beam as a usable move. It was so much fun as a N00B to use Hyper Beam on stuff as an all out powerful attack, but then when I learned about STAB and stuff, it didn't seem good anymore. If they raised the power to 200 or something, then it'd be the same as using a 100 BP move twice, but it might save you every once in a while. Also, then P-Z wouldn't need Life Orb to OHKO Blissey with it, making it a more attractive option.
Once again, the Regis, Snorlax, and Empoleon should all get recovery moves. Mantine and Claydol as well. Almost every halfway tough pokemon should get some sort of recovery. Even if there was a generic move that only restored 40% HP, it'd be better than nothing. Add in lefties and thats 46% per turn, not too bad.
I also think that being able to have secondary abilities for more pokemon would be cool. Sharpedo comes to mind : | An ability better than Clear Body would be nice for the regis, and Empoleon could have shell armor or something. Anything to make the lesser used pokemon better I think is good.
Also, they did it in GSC, why not now? base stat mods would be really nice. Nerf Blissey's defenses and give it better offense so that it doesn't just sit and seismic toss... boring. Normal STAB would be nice. make Cacturne, Crawdaunt and Honchcrow faster. Make Mawile better. Make Chimecho be able to take hits better (it gets recover and wish, it should be able to survive a hit) Nerf base 600s too so that they don't dominate the game so much. It's lame that 10 pokemon are so much better than all the other pokemon. We all know it's true, if only we could even the playing field.
One more thing; make Farfetch'd and Banette able to kick serious butt, we all know how cool they'd be (choice bandux lol)
Once again, the Regis, Snorlax, and Empoleon should all get recovery moves. Mantine and Claydol as well. Almost every halfway tough pokemon should get some sort of recovery. Even if there was a generic move that only restored 40% HP, it'd be better than nothing. Add in lefties and thats 46% per turn, not too bad.
I also think that being able to have secondary abilities for more pokemon would be cool. Sharpedo comes to mind : | An ability better than Clear Body would be nice for the regis, and Empoleon could have shell armor or something. Anything to make the lesser used pokemon better I think is good.
Also, they did it in GSC, why not now? base stat mods would be really nice. Nerf Blissey's defenses and give it better offense so that it doesn't just sit and seismic toss... boring. Normal STAB would be nice. make Cacturne, Crawdaunt and Honchcrow faster. Make Mawile better. Make Chimecho be able to take hits better (it gets recover and wish, it should be able to survive a hit) Nerf base 600s too so that they don't dominate the game so much. It's lame that 10 pokemon are so much better than all the other pokemon. We all know it's true, if only we could even the playing field.
One more thing; make Farfetch'd and Banette able to kick serious butt, we all know how cool they'd be (choice bandux lol)
I'd thought about that already, and I think the best thing would be Nintendo creating an Ability Tutor: For one Tinymushroom, he changes your pokémon's ability (giving your Starmie Natural Cure). However, for a Big Mushroom, he would give ANOTHER ability to Starmie (huh, Volt Absorb?). Obviously, not all pokémon would have access to this alternative ability, but this could be nice to help those pokémon with two crappy abilities, like Slowbro (Unaware!).
A corollary to Mekkah's suggestion of starting afresh is that rather than let Nintendo do the retinkering. Given that Smogon has begun "Create-A-Pokemon," we should have the capabilities to create our own Smogon generation with superior balance to whatever Nintendo is capable of.
What would be decided in a new start would be acceptable levels of diversity in strategy (i.e. weather, baton pass, trick room, stall, perish song etc.) and pokemon (a median pokemon might be chosen to represent the average pokemon [of a tier, if those are planned] and used as the basis to further create pokemon of the tier [almost like a SSB Mario])
Alternatively, if a new generation of pokemon is redistributed with balance in mind, Nintendo can carry out a culling without turning off fans by having the pokemon of the balanced metagame available before the Elite Four, and then have the rest arrive by trade or national dex, so that a ruleset (like 200 play from R/S) exists for a rebalanced, partitioned metagame.
What would be decided in a new start would be acceptable levels of diversity in strategy (i.e. weather, baton pass, trick room, stall, perish song etc.) and pokemon (a median pokemon might be chosen to represent the average pokemon [of a tier, if those are planned] and used as the basis to further create pokemon of the tier [almost like a SSB Mario])
Alternatively, if a new generation of pokemon is redistributed with balance in mind, Nintendo can carry out a culling without turning off fans by having the pokemon of the balanced metagame available before the Elite Four, and then have the rest arrive by trade or national dex, so that a ruleset (like 200 play from R/S) exists for a rebalanced, partitioned metagame.
Nobody wants to use Blissey as a sweeper. It is a great special wall. I dont really think it would be a smart idea to raise it's attack and lower it's defense simply because you get bored when you use it.
Personally I would like some changes:
1) Change the ability Forecast to make you abel to change the weather to whetever you would like, but it would last 5 turns (8 if you have the Heat/Damp/ etc... Rock), and the user would change to a Rock type in a Sandstorm.
2) Slack Off on Snorlax. I don't get why the developers put Slack Off on something like Infernape, which looks more hyper than me after 3 Red Bulls, but not on the laziest Pokemon of all time.
3) More Pokemon that learn Power Gem. Sure we got 2, (Power Gem and Weather Ball in a Sandstorm, Hidden Power doesn't count) but Starmie and Roserade are the only Pokemon that learn it and are capable in OU.
4) No more Sandstream for Tyranitar. Give it Intimidate, Rock Head, or something like that because I don't understand how a T-Rex creates a sandstorm.
5) Where is the Jynx evo? Her, Magmar, and Electabuzz were always in a group. They got pre-evos together too, but then Electabuzz and Magmar recieved evos and she was left in the dust.
6) Poison being better offensively. Make it Super Effective to Fighting, Water, and Normal. The reason why Bug didn't make the list because of the Grass/Bug combo recieving 3 X4 weaknesses against it (Fire, Flying, Poison), even though Parasect was the first Pokemon to recieve a x5 weakness.
7) 3 type Pokemon. I still get pissed off when a Beedrill gets hit by an Earthquake. It's a fucking bee! Bees shouldn't get hit by an Earthquake.
Well that's my rant on what I want for the 5th Generation.
1) Change the ability Forecast to make you abel to change the weather to whetever you would like, but it would last 5 turns (8 if you have the Heat/Damp/ etc... Rock), and the user would change to a Rock type in a Sandstorm.
2) Slack Off on Snorlax. I don't get why the developers put Slack Off on something like Infernape, which looks more hyper than me after 3 Red Bulls, but not on the laziest Pokemon of all time.
3) More Pokemon that learn Power Gem. Sure we got 2, (Power Gem and Weather Ball in a Sandstorm, Hidden Power doesn't count) but Starmie and Roserade are the only Pokemon that learn it and are capable in OU.
4) No more Sandstream for Tyranitar. Give it Intimidate, Rock Head, or something like that because I don't understand how a T-Rex creates a sandstorm.
5) Where is the Jynx evo? Her, Magmar, and Electabuzz were always in a group. They got pre-evos together too, but then Electabuzz and Magmar recieved evos and she was left in the dust.
6) Poison being better offensively. Make it Super Effective to Fighting, Water, and Normal. The reason why Bug didn't make the list because of the Grass/Bug combo recieving 3 X4 weaknesses against it (Fire, Flying, Poison), even though Parasect was the first Pokemon to recieve a x5 weakness.
7) 3 type Pokemon. I still get pissed off when a Beedrill gets hit by an Earthquake. It's a fucking bee! Bees shouldn't get hit by an Earthquake.
Well that's my rant on what I want for the 5th Generation.
Sorry if these have been said before, but I would:
- Incorporate an in game tier system (though, maybe a bad move since gamefreak are mostly idiots about competitive)
- More rapid spin, or remove entry hazards
- Add more auto weather inducers, as well as more auto weather clearers
- Add in a move that clears weather, or prevents weather for being activated for 5 turns (air lock, the move?)
- Upgrade online options to allow (not forced, but optional) disabling of critical hits/secondary status effects, and add in sleep/evasion clauses manually.
- Incorporate an in game tier system (though, maybe a bad move since gamefreak are mostly idiots about competitive)
- More rapid spin, or remove entry hazards
- Add more auto weather inducers, as well as more auto weather clearers
- Add in a move that clears weather, or prevents weather for being activated for 5 turns (air lock, the move?)
- Upgrade online options to allow (not forced, but optional) disabling of critical hits/secondary status effects, and add in sleep/evasion clauses manually.
I am going to pistolwhip the next person who says "PUT ROOST ON EMPOLEON!!!" Since when have you seen a penguin resting its wings after a long flight?
Ice could use some buffing. Give it a Swift-type move, and make it resist Water and Grass. Poison could probably do with some changes too. Make Bugs weak to it again, as well as Normal.
Introduce a new type. They could probably pull off a Light type.
Add more 1st-priority moves, especially one for Electric/Fire types to use.
Make more auto-weather Pokes. We need an non-uber Drizzle and Drought user, and it would also be cool to have an auto-Fogger. Also, make more use of Fog. Make it buff Ghost types (increase the power of their moves, no drawbacks, etc.).
Add a new item that works like a cross between Truant and No Guard: have it so you can only attack every other turn, but every attack will hit. Alternatively, have an item that will guarantee a hit if the Pokemon is not hit that turn/the turn before.
More Rapid Spin-type moves that can be acquired by a much larger range of Pokemon.
Give Snorlax Slack Off.
Ice could use some buffing. Give it a Swift-type move, and make it resist Water and Grass. Poison could probably do with some changes too. Make Bugs weak to it again, as well as Normal.
Introduce a new type. They could probably pull off a Light type.
Add more 1st-priority moves, especially one for Electric/Fire types to use.
Make more auto-weather Pokes. We need an non-uber Drizzle and Drought user, and it would also be cool to have an auto-Fogger. Also, make more use of Fog. Make it buff Ghost types (increase the power of their moves, no drawbacks, etc.).
Add a new item that works like a cross between Truant and No Guard: have it so you can only attack every other turn, but every attack will hit. Alternatively, have an item that will guarantee a hit if the Pokemon is not hit that turn/the turn before.
More Rapid Spin-type moves that can be acquired by a much larger range of Pokemon.
Give Snorlax Slack Off.
If I recall correctly, the actual in-game description of the move says something about resting after flying for a while.
Moves with more than one elemental typing would be fascinating to see. The damage multipliers would be additive (2x weak + 4x weak = 6x weak)
For example: A Water/Ice move that would be accessible to certain pokemon of both types (Ice Flow or whatever Nintendo decides to call it). It would hit things like Gliscor 6x, Garchomp 2x, Jumpluff = 2x, etc.
Hey, if pokemon can be two types, why cant moves? It might not be the best idea, but it would sure as heck change things quite a bit. It would also go along with the changing of move properties that happened in D/P.
For example: A Water/Ice move that would be accessible to certain pokemon of both types (Ice Flow or whatever Nintendo decides to call it). It would hit things like Gliscor 6x, Garchomp 2x, Jumpluff = 2x, etc.
Hey, if pokemon can be two types, why cant moves? It might not be the best idea, but it would sure as heck change things quite a bit. It would also go along with the changing of move properties that happened in D/P.