Unpopular opinions

[QuentinQuonce]

More than any other region, Johto's teams get defended on the basis that the devs faced a bunch of teambuilding restrictions that inhibited what they could do, even though those restrictions (if they were even thought of as such during development) were entirely self-imposed!

Not denying that. It's weird: Heracross learns no good Fighting moves in Gen II. Could they have given it one? Yes, yes they could!

There's odd choices in just about every game though. Wattson having Magneton rather than Manectric as an ace in RS, for instance. At least that one got fixed.

 

[Hugin]

You gonna tell me what Kalos gym teams all were? I can remember some of them, but even they are pretty meh. Unova teams are decent, but most of them are only 2 or 3 Pokemon also. You have Sinnoh which in my opinion has some of the weakest gym and Elite 4 teams, Hoenn is decent but still true, etc.

Vivillion/Surskit.
Aurorus/Tyrantrum. (technically I think it was the pre-evos, but it was the two fossils from this region which is cool and memorable).
Hawlucha, Machoke, some other non-Lucario, non-dark mon with no coverage.
Weepinbell, Skiploon, Gogoat.
Emolga, Magneton, Heliolisk. (And they COULD have done a lot more with this one than they did and I hate it. Just give us a good volt turn team for once!)
Mawile, Sylveon, something else.
Psychic. I remember nothing about this gym other than the aesthetic. A lot of Psychic mons all fit the same mold, fast special attackers, which is good for effectiveness, bad for me remembering if it was Kadabra or Espeon that I one-shot.
Avalugg, Cryogonal, Abomasnow, I don't recall anything else because it's ice, you just spam SE moves and move on. He abused hail which was cool, but also did not matter in any way.

Checking my list...Yep, I was right. Except that I assumed Wulfric had more than 3 mons(WHY does GF want Ice to suck so hard?) and of course I ignored Olympia's team entirely. Every one has a Gen VI mon as their ace, which helps(I only remembered Surskit on Viola but just assumed she'd also have the regional butterfly with a cool gimmick), and this gen was small teams, which made it easier.

It's interesting you specifically chose Kalos for this list. Because the gym teams in Kalos suck. Grant's gimmick is cool and I wish we saw it more often(GSC Brock is the only other time a Rock-specialist uses the fossils IIRC), Valerie is reasonably well-made, and Clemont is at least positioned well to tell the player "Catch a damn ground-type for this fight", but none of them are as challenging as various random route trainers. But even with that, I remembered their teams.

My unpopular opinion: The decision to base the Regions on stuff IRL is really interesting, but I think limits their design options far too much. GF would be much better off if they decided to just scrap real-world inspiration beyond "ooh, let's pull in some Amazon Rainforest over here, and toss in a battle atop the temple at Tenochitlan for the final fight. Oh, and I want a really tough poison gym, pull up the list of venomous Australian creatures for the Zubats of this game."

 

[Ironmage]

Not denying that. It's weird: Heracross learns no good Fighting moves in Gen II. Could they have given it one? Yes, yes they could!

There's odd choices in just about every game though. Wattson having Magneton rather than Manectric as an ace in RS, for instance. At least that one got fixed.

While I think that he should probably have a member of the Electrike line, I also feel that it makes a lot of sense for his ace to be found in New Mauville. While not as much a consideration during the development of RS itself, Mageton feels more unique as an ace since later Electric leaders (or Surge, for that matter) all focus on animalistic Electric-types.

 

[Sugarbear]

RBY OU sucks. It is the worst OU meta of all. Do you hate seeing the same Pokemon on every team? Are there certain mechanics you find really cheap and annoying? If the answer to either of those 2 was yes, don't play RBY OU. Sleep is broken. Crit rates being based on Speed is dumb. Wrap and all the variants are just stupid. The Psychic type is OP. The Normal type is also OP. Special only being one stat, just...why? Attack and Defence got separate stats, why didn't Special?

RBY OU isn't just my least favourite OU tier to play, it's flat out my least favourite tier full stop (though SS Ubers and ORAS Ubers come close, fuck Calyrex-Shadow and fuck Primal Groudon.)

 

[Samtendo09]

I don't mean to defend the Johto teams, moreso just say: They don't really matter?

Ultimately Johto did a good job at doing what it actually needed to do: Make the (two) Champion teams memorable. The first time I tried Showdown it was in 2014 and I was remaking Trainer Red's team in like, BW OU lol.

Ultimately most of the time, only 1 gym leader will maybe stick out, but generally the time spent on fighting a gym leader should be memorable, but generally isn't IMO. I don't think Johto is a deeply worse game because a few trainers have subpar teams, when IMO that's just the norm.

You gonna tell me what Kalos gym teams all were? I can remember some of them, but even they are pretty meh. Unova teams are decent, but most of them are only 2 or 3 Pokemon also. You have Sinnoh which in my opinion has some of the weakest gym and Elite 4 teams, Hoenn is decent but still true, etc.

The main thing is just having those few endgame trainers that people remember, and IMO Johto did do that.

Does that mean that the Gym Leaders aren’t even meant to be memorable, or at least not anymore since the second generation, and are just fillers for sake of extending the game? Because even if the game is made for a younger audience in mind, I doubt kids would find any Gym Leader memorable because of their team, but because of what design and personality they have.

There’s no harm having a large cast of memorable characters than just a few ones, otherwise it feels like waste of resources. Kid Icarus: Uprising doesn’t have just memorable main cast and end bosses, but also memorable bosses and side characters like Magnus and especially Dark Pit.

 

[ant4456]

and are just fillers for sake of extending the game?

In my opinion? Gameplay wise?

Yes. I don't care about them gameplay wise and I think they are in fact, mostly filler, mostly formulaic, and almost all of them do not serve the purpose of being an interesting part of the game.

I think that Game Freak also agrees with your assessment, which is why in the last two generations, Gym Leaders have gone from parts of the game that mostly serve as a formula/progress tracker ("I have X badges, I am X way through the game!", arbitrary bosses are not that uncommon in JRPGs tbh), to being bigger parts of the marketing and more of characters.

Sword and Shield tried to make them more special with Dynamax, and stadiums. I think they are doing fine outside of the gameplay part. But if Falkner had a Hoothoot / Noctowl instead of a Pidgeotto, I really don't think it'd change Falkner's effect on the average players experience. Which is why my opinion is more "for most gyms, the teams do not really matter", than "The Johto Gym Leader teams are good."

I feel like most gym leaders that aren't newer and have more memorable teams, is mostly out of challenge. But if we judged Johto gyms by challenge, I think it'd be unfair in a series where I'd say almost every gym leader is extremely easy. Whitney Miltank is in fact memorable, but not because of Miltank, more because of the difficulty players faced. In another world, Whitney has a Tauros and somehow it also has Milk Drink, and some other status move. People as kids struggle very hard to fight it, and it's known infamously as "Whitney's Tauros".

 

[MisogiKurakawa]

Does that mean that the Gym Leaders aren’t even meant to be memorable, or at least not anymore since the second generation, and are just fillers for sake of extending the game? Because even if the game is made for a younger audience in mind, I doubt kids would find any Gym Leader memorable because of their team, but because of what design and personality they have.

There’s no harm having a large cast of memorable characters than just a few ones, otherwise it feels like waste of resources. Kid Icarus: Uprising doesn’t have just memorable main cast and end bosses, but also memorable bosses and side characters like Magnus and especially Dark Pit.

Adding to this, there's a reason why the vast majority of fan-works give all the bosses full teams of six mons; it allows for far more memorable and actually tense boss encounters that challenge your skill. Just look at the first Gym battle of Reborn for an example:

Obviously, this isn't exactly threatening, but for a first "major" boss fight? This works. It actually asks you to consider things like team composition and set-up, rather than just being essentially an enemy trainer with slightly higher levels. And that's....fun? It's actually making you meaningfully engage with the game? Dunno why that's such a controversial stance.

In my opinion? Gameplay wise?

Yes. I don't care about them gameplay wise and I think they are in fact, mostly filler, mostly formulaic, and almost all of them do not serve the purpose of being an interesting part of the game.

I think that Game Freak also agrees with your assessment, which is why in the last two generations, Gym Leaders have gone from parts of the game that mostly serve as a formula/progress tracker ("I have X badges, I am X way through the game!", arbitrary bosses are not that uncommon in JRPGs tbh), to being bigger parts of the marketing and more of characters.

Sword and Shield tried to make them more special with Dynamax, and stadiums. I think they are doing fine outside of the gameplay part. But if Falkner had a Hoothoot / Noctowl instead of a Pidgeotto, I really don't think it'd change Falkner's effect on the average players experience. Which is why my opinion is more "for most gyms, the teams do not really matter", than "The Johto Gym Leader teams are good."

I feel like most gym leaders that aren't newer and have more memorable teams, is mostly out of challenge. But if we judged Johto gyms by challenge, I think it'd be unfair in a series where I'd say almost every gym leader is extremely easy. Whitney Miltank is in fact memorable, but not because of Miltank, more because of the difficulty players faced. In another world, Whitney has a Tauros and somehow it also has Milk Drink, and some other status move. People as kids struggle very hard to fight it, and it's known infamously as "Whitney's Tauros".

....Not really?

Sure, the Gym Leaders might have more overt personality now, they're, but the majority of them still only exist to give singular boss encounters. There's no greater story significance to them beyond that, and consequently their characters are pretty one-dimensional. Look on Pixiv and you'd see the Paldea Elite 4 vastly outdoes the majority of the Gym Leaders (besides Iono, who was basically tailor-made to appeal to otaku), simply because fans took to liking the interplay they were given. Because those kinds of settings are what create interesting characters.

 

[Samtendo09]

Adding to this, there's a reason why the vast majority of fan-works give all the bosses full teams of six mons; it allows for far more memorable and actually tense boss encounters that challenge your skill. Just look at the first Gym battle of Reborn for an example:

View attachment 561946

Obviously, this isn't exactly threatening, but for a first "major" boss fight? This works. It actually asks you to consider things like team composition and set-up, rather than just being essentially an enemy trainer with slightly higher levels. And that's....fun? It's actually making you meaningfully engage with the game? Dunno why that's such a controversial stance.

Moreso responding to the part I bolded; it were due to the fact that children will be caught off guard with having to suddenly face six Pokémon at once as soon as the first Gym. I do not think older but still casual fans would be prepared for such a jump, either.

If anyone explicitly states that the player should bring a full party of six for Gym Battles, it would give a foreshadowing that the Gym Leader will have a full team, too, so that the player will be prepared for this fact. Just as early as the guy who is at every gym entrance, or the receptionist, telling you in advance that you’d better bring a full team of six will help warn the player about this.

I do agree that Paldea’s Gym Leaders didn’t have much personality in the long run, while Paldea’s Elite Four managed to be more memorable due to interacting with any named character than just the player, namely each others. At least there are a few gems gameplay-wise, such as Iono’s Tera Electric Mismagius who have Levitate to negate Electric’s only weakness in ground.

 

[Hugin]

There's my other unpopular opinion:
I don't think gyms need to be difficult. I DO think they should be designed to make you engage with various elements of the game. I'm on record as saying we should have a Dragon-gym as the first or second gym at some point, to tell the player "you can't just steamroll with your starter and nothing else." I think an Electric gym making ground-types near-mandatory is a good idea, as along as it comes AFTER the player has a bunch of opportunities to catch ground-types rather than before(Clemont vs Wattson). Give us a game where 1 Gym uses their own setup mons(Norman's gym trainers are a treat), another uses screens, etc. Make the player engage with the mechanics of the game in some way other than SE move goes BRRR. A 6-mon starting gym is a nightmare for casual players, leave that for gyms 5-8. But a starting gym that says "you're gonna learn something today" is a good design choice. Take players and lead them through the various elements of the game that they otherwise won't even know exist.

 

[ant4456]

I'm not saying that gameplay can't make things more memorable, far from it, I think difficulty is better and better teams are better. I'm just saying it doesn't matter as much in the long run.

Also, while I think SV kinda didn't hit as hard with the gym leaders as SWSH, don't get it twisted: the Sword and Shield gym leaders were almost all popular. Not all equal, but characters like Raihan and Nessa are immensely popular.

Plus, the most popular Elite 4 member of SV is, by far, Larry... who is also a gym leader.

 

[Cobalt Empoleon]

Adding to this, there's a reason why the vast majority of fan-works give all the bosses full teams of six mons; it allows for far more memorable and actually tense boss encounters that challenge your skill. Just look at the first Gym battle of Reborn for an example:

View attachment 561946

Obviously, this isn't exactly threatening, but for a first "major" boss fight? This works. It actually asks you to consider things like team composition and set-up, rather than just being essentially an enemy trainer with slightly higher levels. And that's....fun? It's actually making you meaningfully engage with the game? Dunno why that's such a controversial stance.

Not to get too deep into a discussion of non-official games, but what's especially notable about Julia's team, for me, is that her personality is "manic cheerleader who likes explosions" and her team is exactly half cheerleader Pokemon and half Pokemon known for exploding, all without needing to go beyond her specialty type.

 

[ant4456]

unpopular opinion: fakemon are unappealing at the base of itself conceptually

I'm not one to think Game Freak has the best designs, because they don't, but the point is that they are official Pokemon. And that immediately makes me care about something 10x more. Being official does give something more merits.

how am I supposed to give a shit about a fakemon fangame when I can't talk to other random pokemon fans about how cool it is, or my headcanon about it, and trade them that Pokemon, or use it in competitive play

yungoos may not be peak but it will have more worth to me than even a 10/10, best fakemon design ever to me, because I can actually do what Pokemon is about: socialize

if pokemon was just a singleplayer RPG it'd be so much more mid, and if it was just a niche topic, I'd never get as invested into it, period. Keeping myself up to date with hundreds of new creatures and I can't even say on the internet "x mon is super cute I love it" because no one will know what I'm even talking about? immediate turn off to me

I think the biggest strength of creature collection is social activity, and fakemon as a concept is pretty impossible to get off the ground in that way. Even with a singleplayer game like Legends Arceus, because it's official Pokemon and it's one of the largest franchises ever, I can talk for literal hours and get external entertainment just talking about the Pokemon. Let alone the shit ton of fanart and other things that will inevitably come.

(btw this isn't about fakemon ideas that are say, evolutions, this is more about say "hey here is our own dex", because I think fan speculation on forms/evolutions can make for pretty interesting stuff at times, and make for funny dynamics like me being very into the dunsparce evo [i thought the idea of it becoming a dragon was dumb], and people who were unironically mad about it)

btw I have similar thoughts about other games in the genre in general. I think being popular is a naturally required thing for a good game focused on creature collection, which is why I don't think Pokemon will ever have serious competition. Because Pokemon is one of the most rewarding franchises socially to know shit about, while the hundreds of hours I put into playing Temtem has maybe led to three conversations where people told me they didn't care about the designs as much as Pokemon. which, fair

 

[Castersvarog]

There's my other unpopular opinion:
I don't think gyms need to be difficult. I DO think they should be designed to make you engage with various elements of the game. I'm on record as saying we should have a Dragon-gym as the first or second gym at some point, to tell the player "you can't just steamroll with your starter and nothing else." I think an Electric gym making ground-types near-mandatory is a good idea, as along as it comes AFTER the player has a bunch of opportunities to catch ground-types rather than before(Clemont vs Wattson). Give us a game where 1 Gym uses their own setup mons(Norman's gym trainers are a treat), another uses screens, etc. Make the player engage with the mechanics of the game in some way other than SE move goes BRRR. A 6-mon starting gym is a nightmare for casual players, leave that for gyms 5-8. But a starting gym that says "you're gonna learn something today" is a good design choice. Take players and lead them through the various elements of the game that they otherwise won't even know exist.

Tbh I feel like having gyms actually use mechanics like the ones you mentioned would automatically make them tougher then they currently are just by virtue of there being something happening. Like a Fire gym using Drought/Sunny day would cripple a players water types forcing them to make a new strategy that isn’t just spam surf/water pulse/etc and win.

Though personally I do feel like almost all gyms could stand to bring in an extra Mon or two. The eighth gym leader should not have the same amount of Mons as the second gym; like at least 5 at the most.

 

[MoonlightRose]

When they were changing up the type chart in gen 6 they should have gone further.

 

[Worldie]

When they were changing up the type chart in gen 6 they should have gone further.

Yesnt.

Tampering with the type chart is a pretty bad plan in general due to breaking continuity.

The only time they've actually changed the type chart has been when they felt the need to nerf a specific type, and that's been via either
- Adding a new type that interacts with it (Gen 2 adding Steel/Dark to nerf Psychic, Gen 6 adding Fairies to nerf Dragons and Fighting types)
- Modifying a interaction (Gen 2 changing Fire to resist Ice, Gen 6 nerfing Steel to not resist Dark/Ghost anymore)

I doubt gen 2 was intentionally to "nerf psychic" per se as gen 1 did not really have a competitive scene (and regardless the only types that interacted with Psychic in a meaningful way either did not really have users or were bugged in first place), and rather they probably wanted to add new types + figured fire should resist ice for logic reasons.

This leaves gen 6 as the only time where they intentionally tampered with the type chart for balance reasons, reasonably so considering that the previous generation VGC had a massive influx of very strong Dragon types.

As of now, despite what people would say, there isn't really a "op" type. People generally blame the fairy type for being OP, but as I've been advocating for ages, the issue is not the fairy type, but the fact they kept making insanely strong and optimized fairy types (see Xerneas, the Tapus, Zacian). Case in point, current generation only has 1 relevant fairy type in VGC, and a handful in smogon singles, all of which basically featuring minmaxed traits (Flutter Mane in VGC, Iron Valiant / Enamorous in smogon). You don't hear people complaining of how busted Dachsbun or Tinkaton are do you. Heck the 2 most busted pokemon currently in Ubers are Dragon types, one of which 4x weak to fairy if it doesn't terastalize.
Even Steel is still a insanely good defensive type but it's balanced out by being basically worthless as offensive type (moreso without any relevant fairy) and the only reason to ever have a steel move in VGC is to nuke Flutter Mane out of existance with Heavy Slam, while also sporting a dangerous Fighting weakness in metagames infested by actually strong fighting and fire types (cough cough Urshifu and Ogerbonk).
And lo and behold, Ice types suddently don't suck now that there's actually good ice types in the pool, since unsurprisingly stab ice attacks are actually good when they actually design glass cannon ice types and not Avalugg.

TLDR: I don't think there's any need to change the type chart. People are just too biased to just blame the typing rather than the minmax of a typing.

 

[Samtendo09]

Yesnt.

Tampering with the type chart is a pretty bad plan in general due to breaking continuity.

The only time they've actually changed the type chart has been when they felt the need to nerf a specific type, and that's been via either
- Adding a new type that interacts with it (Gen 2 adding Steel/Dark to nerf Psychic, Gen 6 adding Fairies to nerf Dragons and Fighting types)
- Modifying a interaction (Gen 2 changing Fire to resist Ice, Gen 6 nerfing Steel to not resist Dark/Ghost anymore)

I doubt gen 2 was intentionally to "nerf psychic" per se as gen 1 did not really have a competitive scene (and regardless the only types that interacted with Psychic in a meaningful way either did not really have users or were bugged in first place), and rather they probably wanted to add new types + figured fire should resist ice for logic reasons.

This leaves gen 6 as the only time where they intentionally tampered with the type chart for balance reasons, reasonably so considering that the previous generation VGC had a massive influx of very strong Dragon types.

As of now, despite what people would say, there isn't really a "op" type. People generally blame the fairy type for being OP, but as I've been advocating for ages, the issue is not the fairy type, but the fact they kept making insanely strong and optimized fairy types (see Xerneas, the Tapus, Zacian). Case in point, current generation only has 1 relevant fairy type in VGC, and a handful in smogon singles, all of which basically featuring minmaxed traits (Flutter Mane in VGC, Iron Valiant / Enamorous in smogon). You don't hear people complaining of how busted Dachsbun or Tinkaton are do you. Heck the 2 most busted pokemon currently in Ubers are Dragon types, one of which 4x weak to fairy if it doesn't terastalize.
Even Steel is still a insanely good defensive type but it's balanced out by being basically worthless as offensive type (moreso without any relevant fairy) and the only reason to ever have a steel move in VGC is to nuke Flutter Mane out of existance with Heavy Slam, while also sporting a dangerous Fighting weakness in metagames infested by actually strong fighting and fire types (cough cough Urshifu and Ogerbonk).
And lo and behold, Ice types suddently don't suck now that there's actually good ice types in the pool, since unsurprisingly stab ice attacks are actually good when they actually design glass cannon ice types and not Avalugg.

TLDR: I don't think there's any need to change the type chart. People are just too biased to just blame the typing rather than the minmax of a typing.

The problem is that the damage is already done at this rate, plus the types, even if not “OP”, can make or break a Pokémon’s concept and stat distribution without an Ability to back it up. It is true that Koraidon and Miraidon are examples of blatantly overpowered Dragon-type, even by Legendary standard, but Miraidon’s Electric-type complementing their Ability and Koraidon’s Dragon / Fighting type appreciating the Fire-type boost via Orichalcum Pulse summoning the sun are examples of making advantage of their types further than they should.

A Fairy-type turning into a Bug-type have more impact than you would think. Sure, it’s no big deal if the other type is Steel so Magearna and Gen 8 Crowned Zacian can’t be any weaker, but if Flutter Mane is akin to Ghost / Bug, it would be much less unbearable since Bug is a much less powerful Bug STAB.

The Fairy-type itself isn’t overpowered, sure, but it is still among the best due to Steel and Poison aren’t common offensive type to begin with, and thus rears it’s ugly head when combined with another great defensive typing like Water or especially Steel. It straddles the fine line between “Top tier but not OP” to “Obnoxiously OP” because of such defensive perks.

Another issue with the current type chart is that Ice-type as-is would only allow fast Ice Pokémon to work, which means if we want them to work, we have to make them fast and hard-hitting, which can get monotonous fast. Snow giving a Defense boost to Ice-type Pokémon isn’t enough to give viability to slower, bulkier Ice-type; it just makes faster and hard-hitting Ice-type Pokémon and Slush Rushers even better than before.

Rock also suffered a similar issue to Ice, even if nowhere as bad. Sandstorm doesn’t make slow, bulky Rock-type Pokémon not named Tyranitar more viable, because Rock just happened to have so many weaknesses despite many older and newer Pokémon being built as slow, tanky Pokémon. Only Garganacl managed to get away due to Terastalization, Salt Cure and great Defense alongside good Special Defense and no double weaknesses. One argue that it’s a slow, sturdy Rock-type done right since Tyranitar, but it’s more of a case of blatant minmaxing with Salt Cure AND Purifying Salt at work.

There’s reason why many fans aren’t willing to give a chance to a new type since the sixth generations, as the issues are still there, and it’s that the minmaxed Pokémon of the more viable types just make this issue even more problematic, not less. If anything, it can cause an even bigger contradiction if a new type is introduced right after Gen IX.

tl;dr The type chart have it’s flaws that is as big of a fault as the blatant minmaxing. A new type can wait.

 

[ant4456]

Pokemon is better with centralizing types, middling types, and way worse types. Having better and worse types isn't a bug(hah), it's a feature.

Makes the game more interesting, makes competitive better (a theoretically way more "neutral" type chart is a lot harder to prepare for), and ultimately I don't want them to focus on changing it for balance.

You may use Bug Type as an example of the type chart being bad, but Bug Type being weaker also makes it an underdog type and something that people root for, and pay more attention to. It makes conversations more interesting, and shapes the chart in ways that aren't there on paper. If Bug was just a middling to high type, it'd be less popular to a lot of fans. It also serves to make the Bug Types that succeed more interesting, and the type I see people most interested to see get good Pokemon is Bug.

Type chart is more than just on paper. And having better and weaker types is a good thing, even to a drastic degree.

 

[Sonikku A]

My evil ass:

(Rip Skarmory, and partially Rip grass types)

 

[ant4456]

also unpopular opinion of the day: fairy type is the best and coolest type, and if you hate it/think it shouldnt have been added you're weird

them owning dragon type is awesome

 

[Ironmage]

In addition to the chart interactions stat spreads of a type, I think that particularly notable moves also play a factor. For Bug, there's a solid argument that the likes of U-Turn, First Impression, Quiver Dance, and/or Sticky Web would be unreasonable if given to a type that isn't offensively bad.

However, I do think that Fairy's interactions are still a bit half-baked. As the 'balance shakeup' type, it's designed to completely block the then-best offensive type and be weak to types that are seldom used offensively, but the existence of offensive Poison and Steel options to actually hit that weakness is still lagging behind (nevermind the amount of times it's poison/fighting vs fairy/psychic).

As a minor tangent to the above, I'm slightly disappointed that Salt Cure doesn't hit Fairy types for 25%, since it seems like it would work from both a mechanics (the move targets the other two best defensive types) and flavour (for the same reason Purifying Salt confers a Ghost resistance) perspective.

 

[Blue glass]

Ice should be super-effective against rock and both types are fine in their interactions the problem is that they are oriented offensively but the pokémon receive defensive stats with low speed. Fairy shouldn't be immune to dragon and resist bug because dragon as a type was never OP but its pokémon had in general high stats so of course many of them would become good competitively.

 

[ant4456]

Fairy shouldn't be immune to dragon and resist bug because dragon as a type was never OP

1. In Generation 5 OU, some Dragon-Types were literally using only one Attacking move: Outrage, and succeeding.

You had sets like Outrage, Dragon Dance, Roost, Substitute, succeed and sweeping great teams. That's insane. No coverage necessary. Ferrothorn? Not a problem, it will break through eventually. That's absurd.

Dragon-Types were also absurd in Doubles and the only reason they weren't spammed even more was because Physical Dragon STAB isn't very good in Doubles.

Defensively, Dragon resists the entire 4 Basic Types (Grass, Fire, Water and Electric), and is only weak to two: Ice and Dragon. Dragon being, you know, the type we are talking about; and Ice-Type being a rarer type to be viable, especially in Doubles, which matters more than Singles.

It was also one of the best neutral defensive typings in the game. You wanna blame it on stats? Fucking Altaria was a good Dragon Dance sweeper in DPP UU.

Dragon-Type was objectively busted. Like, insanely so. DragMag was literally a thing, being able to remove the one or two Steels on a team, the only thing stopping the Dragons from basically picking up a KO every time they attacked, was viable. Stacking 3+ Dragons on a team was viable!

2. Fairy resisting Bug makes sense because in a lot of folklore, fairies control bugs and creatures of lower dominion. It's a lot more fair to say Fairy shouldn't resist Bug than your prior statement though.

 

[Sonikku A]

*makes Ice immune to Dragon, Steel SE on Dragon*
*Makes new well not after Gen 9 Snow weather where it slows down water and dragon, buffs Ice speed*
Never understood why Steel wasn't SE on dragon

 

[Worldie]

Never understood why Steel wasn't SE on dragon

Why would it be, if anything it should be the opposite, as Dragons have hardly ever had any problem dealing with armored knights (in fact, since most dragons know fire moves, dragons rarely struggled with steel types as far as just "hitting supereffectively", it's always just been rather a issue of practical 4MSS in competitive)

 

[pika pal]

Yesnt.

Tampering with the type chart is a pretty bad plan in general due to breaking continuity.

The only time they've actually changed the type chart has been when they felt the need to nerf a specific type, and that's been via either
- Adding a new type that interacts with it (Gen 2 adding Steel/Dark to nerf Psychic, Gen 6 adding Fairies to nerf Dragons and Fighting types)
- Modifying a interaction (Gen 2 changing Fire to resist Ice, Gen 6 nerfing Steel to not resist Dark/Ghost anymore)

I doubt gen 2 was intentionally to "nerf psychic" per se as gen 1 did not really have a competitive scene (and regardless the only types that interacted with Psychic in a meaningful way either did not really have users or were bugged in first place), and rather they probably wanted to add new types + figured fire should resist ice for logic reasons.

This leaves gen 6 as the only time where they intentionally tampered with the type chart for balance reasons, reasonably so considering that the previous generation VGC had a massive influx of very strong Dragon types.

As of now, despite what people would say, there isn't really a "op" type. People generally blame the fairy type for being OP, but as I've been advocating for ages, the issue is not the fairy type, but the fact they kept making insanely strong and optimized fairy types (see Xerneas, the Tapus, Zacian). Case in point, current generation only has 1 relevant fairy type in VGC, and a handful in smogon singles, all of which basically featuring minmaxed traits (Flutter Mane in VGC, Iron Valiant / Enamorous in smogon). You don't hear people complaining of how busted Dachsbun or Tinkaton are do you. Heck the 2 most busted pokemon currently in Ubers are Dragon types, one of which 4x weak to fairy if it doesn't terastalize.
Even Steel is still a insanely good defensive type but it's balanced out by being basically worthless as offensive type (moreso without any relevant fairy) and the only reason to ever have a steel move in VGC is to nuke Flutter Mane out of existance with Heavy Slam, while also sporting a dangerous Fighting weakness in metagames infested by actually strong fighting and fire types (cough cough Urshifu and Ogerbonk).
And lo and behold, Ice types suddently don't suck now that there's actually good ice types in the pool, since unsurprisingly stab ice attacks are actually good when they actually design glass cannon ice types and not Avalugg.

TLDR: I don't think there's any need to change the type chart. People are just too biased to just blame the typing rather than the minmax of a typing.

So I have a few arguments or additions to make to some of these points.

I think Gamefreak DID consider Psychic's type chart interactions (or lack thereof) with Gen 2's additions. One type I could chalk up to coincidence, but the second one feels a lot more deliberate.

Steel as a type was probably a natural addition regardless, but its resistance to Psychic, even if not directly to nerf it, could very reasonably have come from "Psychic needs to interact with more types, why not resisted by the new type so we don't have to mess with the old ones?" for example.
Dark on the other hand is where I see more intention. It's similar to Fairy with Dragon: a new type introduced with a very optimal match-up against an overbearing type (Immunity to its moves and SE itself against them), plus weaknesses that shore up types that under-performed offensively in the prior Gen(s) that may also hamper that type (Fairy brings up Poison and Steel as a Dragon Res, Dark brings up Fighting for Normal and also Bug for more anti-Psychic). This feels a lot more deliberate to me, especially since looking at Multimedia depictions, Psychic was never QUITE supposed to be this big Menacing Boss type in the same way Dragon was: Sabrina is scary in the anime but she does have the supposed Ghost Weakness, and Psychics were generally just "one of the crowd" for most other depictions while Dragons continued to get big-boss billing through either Trainers or Legendaries until Gen 6 (Lance in 1-2 as the last-boss who is a Specialist, Drake and Rayquaza as big wigs in Gen 3, the Creation Trio + Cynthia's Garchomp Ace in 4, and the Tao Dragons in 5's much more emphasized story).

I agree that Fairy types are not INHERENTLY overpowered, but I would make the argument Fairy is a disproportionately powerful type. You listed some examples like Dachsbun and Tinkaton of mons that are Fairy but not overpowered, but the opposite perspective I would take is "how much better are these two because of that typing?" Look at something like Klefki as well: would it be nearly as irritating a Utility Pokemon if it was pure Steel or Steel/Psychic, losing things like a Dark Resist and Fighting Neutrality that shores up its defensive profile immensely? Same with Tinkaton, who I don't think would get to UU even with her utility move options if not for the fantastic Steel/Fairy typing to let her throw them out. Fairy is a type where in most gens since its release, there are next-to no notable Pokemon who would prefer NOT having their Fairy type all together (Gen 9 has at most the half-measure of Tera where having Fairy as a base type is still a benefit to lure things or have the extra STAB initially.

Here's an opinion that, I don't know about unpopular, but definitely feels like it hasn't gotten as much talk: Gen 6 didn't make Fairy the OP type by adding Fairy (although it's certainly an obnoxious one in its own right), the type that became OP was Ghost. When Steel gained the valuable resistance to Fairy they saw fit to remove its resistances to Dark and Ghost, presumably to not make Steel's profile TOO overbearing defensively (and certainly the right call with things like Aegislash and Mega Metagross incoming that Gen), but the consequence of this was Ghost losing one of its only 2 relevant resists. In Gen 6 this may not have been as apparent because many Megas with a Normal Typing or Sucker Punch mitigated the issue, but now look at Gen 8. Ghost + Anti-Dark damage achieves perfect neutral coverage (see Flutter Mane, Annihilape, or just every Ghost with Focus Blast/Dazzling Gleam/Moonblast type coverage). Dark gained the resistance in the Fairy types in exchange for the increased neutral damage so the change there was more balanced on Paper at least.