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I don't think this is a hard rule, really. Managing bad outcomes is also an important aspect of competitive play, and in theory Emergency Exit allowed for this. Placing defensive EVs to avoid triggering the 50% HP threshold for Emergency Exit in certain match-ups, using it as an opportunity to pivot back into Golisopod for First Impression burst damage, things like that. Emergency Exit is a known quantity that can be planned around by both a Golisopod user and the opponent, so I don't think control is necessarily 100% in the opponent's hand's regardless - having to take an action to get the Golisopod out still has opportunity cost, especially in Doubles. In practice, Emergency Exit is such a crippling ability that it's hard to actually plan around this in a practical setting, but with +100 BST to work with and a better (defensive) typing I don't think that would necessarily have been true for Mega Golisopod.
I'm not quite as attached to the flavor of Emergency Exit as a number of people here are, but I think drawback abilities aren't necessarily a bad thing like a vocal plurality of the fanbase seems to believe. If nothing else, I'd much rather have had Mega Golisopod be a lousy gimmick than just another Tough Claws mega that clicks its big stupid damage buttons, at least. We'll see in practice how good it actually ends up being at that job, though.
I agree to some degree. (ha ha i made a funny rhyme)
I am not necessarly against debilitating abilities. Sometimes they are fine, if you are given ways to work with them.
For example, I was a big fan of the creative use of Regigigas + Weezing Galar, you have a good pokemon with a debilitating ability, and you are given a way to negate that ability.
Or the use that people do with Truant Durant in battle facilities, turning its otherwise terrible ability into a part of a successful strategy.
Emergency Exit, however, truly fails the mark because *expecially in doubles* it's way way too easy to get around.
The design of Golisopod was clearly
Come in -> strong First Impression -> take a hit -> get kicked out by the ability so you can do it again
While fine in a vacuum, the problem is that the execution is awful. Golisopod FI was never strong enough to justify the investment, bug type just isn't it for a priority move, so what'd normally happen is that you just take a hit on a slow pokemon doing nothing.
You can see the same concept applied properly with instead Tinted Lens Lokix, whose FI was strong enough to actually justify even running Choice Band on it.
The way Golisopod was made ended up being "oh i sure hope the opponent doesn't just double into it or hit me with a rock slide", for no real payoff even when you pulled it off.
And in general, having to rely on the opponent playing into your hand is already bad, but with the payoff it had it was even worse.
Would I have preferred Golisopod to have something thematic? Yes, absolutely. That ability I said while memeing, "Emergency Entrance, where you can only come in via a pivot move or if it's the last pokemon in the team" would have for example been somewhat fun to play around.
Am I mad that Golisopod ended up getting a somewhat dull ability that makes it still actually viable competitively instead of joining the rank of meme megas? No.
Because if the choice is between "this pokemon is a joke noone would seriously consider, but has a thematic ability" and "this pokemon has a boring ability but it's something I will actively consider when making a team", i take option 2 any day.
They were probably gonna give Mega Golisopod an ability called "hit and run" that turned all of its moves into pivot moves when its hp was under 50%, and when they came to their senses they couldn't be bothered to come up with a new ability. :P
They were probably gonna give Mega Golisopod an ability called "hit and run" that turned all of its moves into pivot moves when its hp was under 50%, and when they came to their senses they couldn't be bothered to come up with a new ability. :P
I still feel there easily could have been better choices than Touch Claws. I think that Intimidate for example would have worked pretty well: it plays up the "big scary bug" image that Golisopod tries to present itself as, and it triggering when the mon enters means that it still encourages a lot of switching in and out.
With how its design adds more legs for stability and more arms for more power, I was expecting a signature ability of something like a physical Analytic clone, maybe adding in Suction Cups functionality (this would basically reverse the flavor of its regular form and Emergency Exit).
I'm not complaining about Tough Claws, though; it's a very good ability. Losing Water typing is a little boring (and perhaps negative in Doubles for losing resistances to EQ and Surf/Muddy Water) but Bug/Steel is fairly tried-and-true type combo.
Who is saying "there are too many signature things"? The idea of there being too many signature moves and there being power creep are two different things. Nobody is out here complaining about Seed Sower or Twin Beam, Well-Baked Body or Double Shock, Electromorphosis or Spin Out, Costar or No Retreat. Maybe you are getting Goomba Fallacied or maybe folks are complaining about the gameplay designs that use signature moves to introduce power creep. The only case I can think of is with Water Bubble / Purifying Salts, which is less a complaint about signature abilities themselves and more the need to mash what could be multiple different abilities worth of effects into one to create them. I don't love this but I don't mind it as much if it creates the desired result.
and I'll be clear on my own stance in regards to Golisopod, what I care about is the Emergency Exit effect. That is the thing I wanted to engage with. To see other players learn about. To appreciate. If balance wise that required them to create "Perilous Departure" and frankenstein Tough Claws and Water Bubble onto Emergency Exit to make it viable, so be it. But that portion of Golisopod is its soul. That's what gives it aura. That's the style it has. That's an identifying marker. That's a Signature in a sense so much more real than when the term is when applied to moves and most other abilities because it can't just be discarded on a player's whim when it's inconvenient.
They even gave it Tough Claws - I already made a post somewhere about Tough Claws being kind of boring but at least being applied intelligently, like it creates dynamics in moveset creation because it shuffles the value of certain moves. Rock types don't get a boost to Rock Slide or Stone Edge, Zard X and Mega Meta miss out on a damage boost to Earthquake which they still want to use, that sort of thing. Still completely dead as far as player on player interaction is concerned but whatever.
All of Golisopod's relevant moves make contact already! Tough Claws is just a damage multiplier in every relevant situation - except, sorry, using Rock Slide to take on Charizard Y. My fault. That's the reason it couldn't just have even more Attack and an ability that does A SINGLE ERRAND THING to change interactions with THE OTHER PLAYER. You've taken a straight shot from the ability with the #1 single most in depth player on player interaction schema and have come out the other side with Number Go Up. There are dozens upon dozens of options for abilities that wouldn't have been as good of fits as Emergency Exit but at least would do something. I'd have taken a Physical Attack boosting Berserk clone to preserve the 50% HP threshold thing, and that even synergizes well with Leech Life! I'd have enjoyed some kind of Defensive ability, ideally not one that gave a Fire resist specifically but maybe a Water resist, a Ground resist, a Fighting resist, preserving some valuable part of the original typing would've made for a more standout design.
This mega is a fraud. It's a sign the designers themselves are weak willed, capitulating to the very vocal competitive playerbase and their desire for consistent and non-interactive avenues to power, while also pandering to their expectation of the average mobile gamer and their unwillingness to digest anything more complex than the gameplay equivalent of finely puréed baby food. Stapling that to what remains the boldest and most successful attempt thus far at creating an ability that incorporates a major drawback as a core feature of a Pokemon's design just reeks. It's utterly pathetic.
We throw around the term "Signature" when talking about moves and abilities, and sometimes it becomes synonymous with "Exclusive To" - a result is sentences like "Megahorn stopped being the Signature move of Heracross in Generation 3" - in this case, Signature is being used to describe the definite point at which other Pokemon gained access to Megahorn rather than the somewhat arbitrary point at which Heracross gained enough other powerful tools to make Megahorn not only a move it won't always run but a move it will usually replace. (A point in time, to be clear, that was not Generation 3.) One could still argue it stayed the Signature Megahorn Pokemon for quite a long time after Seaking and Rhydon could technically replicate the technique, and you could argue it's still the Signature user of the move, depressing as that is when Megahorn is arguably not even in the top 5 most common moves for Heracross to use.
I think this logic works weirdly in other ways too. Mist Ball and Luster Purge have been exclusive to Latias and Latios for over 20 years but I'd hesitate to call them Signature moves for the pair in a competitive context until Scarlet and Violet buffed them to not be worse than Psychic in most situations. There might be a couple of Crabs around now to Crabhammer but outside it's much crazier Generation 1 iteration, I'd say the move's Signature status could be best applied to Crawdaunt, especially with Kingler taking up Sheer Force Liquidation. Sparkling Aria might be only learned by Primarina and Lapras and thus be more exclusive than Darkest Lariat which became a TR tutor move in SwSh, but it's still a stronger call for me as a Signature because, outside SV, Incineroar actually uses it where Primarina very often just used Surf instead.
First thing: Hi, I'm (one of) the guy(s) saying the Signature spam is ridiculous because I think it's a lazy way to force a "unique" identity on a Mon rather than try giving it a cohesive set of tools. It becomes doubly so when said Sig is not specific enough to the mon even then and thus ends up distributed later (EX: Spiky Shield).
I have never played a competitive format that Golisopod was eligible for, I just think its design is cool, and I ABSOLUTELY F*CKING HATE Emergency Exit on it. Its stats already convey its point perfectly fine: the pre-evo is Magikarp tier weak with only speed standing out to run and hide. The evolved form sounds funny with the same ability under a different name to convey that cowardice, until you look at the stats and see a much simpler point: it's armored up and imposing looking but too slow to ever swing first and start a fight (hence still afraid). Golisopod's also a very competent Pokemon statistically, so being so easily scared out just comes through as frustrating.
The Pokedex entries propose nothing alluding to Golisopod still being cowardly/conflict averse/quick to bail, which is on FULL display with Wimpod's entries fleeing at any scare and being a scavenger. Golisopod alludes frequently to it "doing anything to win" suggesting more of a dirty fighter than a quick to flee one.
Storywise, the ability doesn't consistently play into this theme with Golisopod's main user, Guzma. Guzma in the games is challenged by the player frequently but the aspects he cowers away from are more responsibilities or challenges of character than strength. Contrast the anime where this is a more clear cut trait of Guzma making excuses to bow out of fights he can't win easily, but he is still depicted as a competent battler in line with the mon's nature (albeit as a character trait he and Pod develop out of). Heck, THAT would be my case for the Mega ditching the ability: the power and its trainer's support push it to stop being afraid and fight for real.
What Gamefreak needs to learn is when they're taking a bit too far, to the degree of making the game unfun to engage with. Slaking visually conveys its laziness more effectively, is strong enough to balance its downside ability, and most importantly does not allow main game opponents (much less PvP opponents) to immediately invalidate it from interaction just by employing a completely normal and braindead approach (ATTACK over and over vs Protect stalling). Regigigas I also think is guilty of this because Slow Start stops making sense beyond the first day it's awakened from a centuries long slumber instead of a light rest, as another point of how this is bad because there's no challenge beyond "here, use an objectively bad thing with no nuance to 90% of interaction"
If biting language is on the table, then I say the developers finally got their heads out of their asses and decided to make a Pokemon that's actually fun to play instead of sticking to the bit to the point of being unplayable (as in its low speed and myriad of weaknesses mean it frequently gets forced out before any move you input for its play matters). Emergency Exit was an ability designed for a quick gag and became part of the mon's identity to its detriment for several years. Nuzlocke players finding useful application in a challenge ruleset does not make the ability well designed for the PvE campaign as played under the normal stipulations (a description I feel comfortable using with that interview about TPC not wanting to engage with Nuzlockes and the like in official Social Media). What it makes for is a joke ability that pseudo-intellectual smartasses try to justify as having skill expression against the brain dead CPU trainers, that us Plebians can't understand because we want our cool looking monsters to not actively kneecap us for using them. There's no intelligent integration of the ability into gameplay when you can barely play while using it, and to say otherwise is huffing one's own farts while putting naysayers into the "you're just petulant babies who want everything simplified" so as not to engage with the elephant in the room. Sure, this is a change that only competitive players and the "mobile gamer" idea of a non-thinking child or simpleton, and not an ability people want removed because it's devoid of agency even in casual play. Maybe competitive players (which is probably the main audience for new Mega abilities given they're only in Champions, the damn Comp simulator) dislike it because the game already involves a massive amount of skill to team build and play minute to minute without mons designed to take more work to achieve basic interaction.
I want to hone in on this point because interesting/unique design does not automatically equate to good design. There are a lot of video games that heavily experiment with long-established systems and go off the beaten path to shake things up, and the results can vary wildly such that they can easily become very love or hate. This is especially true if said systems end up complicated and/or esoteric. The first example that comes to mind is Final Fantasy VIII with Junctioning, which is the very complex web of spells and stats and summons and the freaking card minigame that interact in weird ways to define character progression. FFVIII is also one of the most controversial games in its series specifically because of Junctioning. (The writing also contributes but people would probably stomach it more if the act of playing the game made more sense.) The game's immedate successor, Final Fantasy IX, is far more traditional with both gameplay and writing and is also more universally beloved.
Simplifying or removing things that resulted from failed game design experiments does not automatically equate to dumbing down. Sometimes the shit you made is actual shit and you should dump it.
First thing: Hi, I'm (one of) the guy(s) saying the Signature spam is ridiculous because I think it's a lazy way to force a "unique" identity on a Mon rather than try giving it a cohesive set of tools. It becomes doubly so when said Sig is not specific enough to the mon even then and thus ends up distributed later (EX: Spiky Shield).
Fair enough angle for this thought. I'm at this point ambivalent towards underwhelming new exclusive tools that later get made into generic options, and to some extent I prefer the new tools themselves being generic and not super overwhelming so they can conceivably be given to other Pokemon later down the line, becoming just another small unique part of their tool kit. There's another conversation here about centralizing tools and how powerful new things need to be to not be outclassed by standard existing game elements.
... I ABSOLUTELY F*CKING HATE Emergency Exit on it. (Golisopod) Its stats already convey its point perfectly fine: the pre-evo is Magikarp tier weak with only speed standing out to run and hide. The evolved form sounds funny with the same ability under a different name to convey that cowardice, until you look at the stats and see a much simpler point: it's armored up and imposing looking but too slow to ever swing first and start a fight (hence still afraid). Golisopod's also a very competent Pokemon statistically, so being so easily scared out just comes through as frustrating.
The Pokedex entries propose nothing alluding to Golisopod still being cowardly/conflict averse/quick to bail, which is on FULL display with Wimpod's entries fleeing at any scare and being a scavenger. Golisopod alludes frequently to it "doing anything to win" suggesting more of a dirty fighter than a quick to flee one.
Storywise, the ability doesn't consistently play into this theme with Golisopod's main user, Guzma. Guzma in the games is challenged by the player frequently but the aspects he cowers away from are more responsibilities or challenges of character than strength. Contrast the anime where this is a more clear cut trait of Guzma making excuses to bow out of fights he can't win easily, but he is still depicted as a competent battler in line with the mon's nature (albeit as a character trait he and Pod develop out of). Heck, THAT would be my case for the Mega ditching the ability: the power and its trainer's support push it to stop being afraid and fight for real.
Flavor-wise I think there's more of an argument here. Emergency Exit falls squarely under the category of abilities that very bluntly enforce a desired personality trait through gameplay, and when applied to a species broadly there does come a sense that the line between the qualities of that trait which apply to one specific individual and the represented collective get muddied. In my view, the reason Golisopod only ever has Emergency Exit is because players would seldom willingly choose to use it over anything else, and the designers wanted to enforce the intended gameplay gimmick, similar to Defeatist. I think that decision only holds more and more water the more I see people squirm at the thought of having to use it.
What I do see in the flavor of Emergency Exit is a more sincere reading of the reframing. First Impression is extremely blatant in it's synergy with Emergency Exit and is difficult to purposely avoid when training a Golisopod - it learns it upon evolving with only the pathetic Struggle Bug and Sand Attack prior. Gen 7 it learns Sucker Punch one level after evolving, and then it takes Golisopod another 11 levels to learn another Attacking move that isn't a priority attack with an activation condition. In other words, there's a period where Golisopod is very limited in its capacity to deal any damage to foes whatsoever without regaining the upper hand with another First Impression. TMs prevent this from being any kind of real problem in practice, but it seems tailored to show that this sort of surprise-attack focus is something very natural to the creature. To that end, Emergency Exit is simply and straightforwardly pragmatic - it enables Golisopod to do use a technique it's reliant upon a second time, to regain the upper hand in what developed into a dangerous situation. (Helpfully, wild Golisopod haven't been a part of the game to not break this illusion.)
As for Guzma, I'm unfamiliar with the anime depiction of him and don't really know how it's meant to come across. For the games nothing about his character is nearly as clearly spelled out as that theme though, and the writing leaves plenty of ways to interpret him and the ways Golisopod / Emergency Exit reflect him. An interpretation I've gleaned is that Guzma is essentially a noob-stomper. One thing I'm reminded of when watching newer plays take him on is that First Impression makes... a strong First Impression! Given it's an exclusive move to Golisopod and is never really explained elsewhere, it isn't really intuitive that it only works the first turn after it enters, that it has priority to make it move before your attacks, or hell even why it sometimes moves before you and then other times moves after you. Combined with a fairly obscure typing and a ton of bulk to make Emergency Exit proc at a somewhat random time when taking neutral damage, and I see many beginner players get completely thrown off facing Guzma. Knowing the mechanics behind Golisopod makes it much less menacing as a foe, but Guzma leverages a knowledge check to bulldoze weaker foes with a blitz of an opening volley to instill fear and disbelief in foes, a tactic that falls apart against foes resilient enough to continue fighting after a tough start or to those wise enough to maneuver around it entirely. It's not that he doesn't have the potential to achieve greater things, he's just hit a plateau he believes is a peak and underestimates the ability for others to rise to his challenge due to how easily he steamrolls most opponents.
Struggled to fit this above and will probably struggle to fit it below, but Emergency Exit also acts as a way to introduce the dynamics of mid-battle switch-ins at all. I am not very familiar with SuMo's AI in particular, but trainers throughout the entire series kind of infamously don't utilize mid-battle switching unless they are completely blanked. Emergency Exit's implementation is a way for the designers to implement these dynamics in a very "dumb" way, because the AI routines themselves don't need to be updated to account for it's usage, it can just automatically switch. (And as a perk, unlike active pivoting moves like U-turn and Volt Switch, it being activated in the aftermath of an opponent's attack largely prevents situations where a faster opponent uses a pivoting move against you and forces their teammate to eat a hit) Guzma being the only opponent who utilizes mid battle switches as a core part of his battles is a cool bit of personality that Emergency Exit specifically enables with unique ease and efficiency.
What Gamefreak needs to learn is when they're taking a bit too far, to the degree of making the game unfun to engage with. (...)
(...) Emergency Exit was an ability designed for a quick gag and became part of the mon's identity to its detriment for several years. (...)
(...) What it makes for is a joke ability that pseudo-intellectual smartasses try to justify as having skill expression against the brain dead CPU trainers, that us Plebians can't understand because we want our cool looking monsters to not actively kneecap us for using them. (...)
...is where you lose me entirely. You can be completely correct in understanding Emergency Exit as a purely detrimental element of Golisopod in any situation you have wanted to use it, but there is far too much in the way of connective tissue here to put it in a bucket alongside Truant or Slow Start, which both required an absurd stat stick be attached them to even attempt to approach usability and have always completely dead designs in PVP because even when the giant ball of stats they're attached to arrive, they can only reasonably be used alongside partners that scrub the existence of the ability. Golisopod didn't even need to crack a threshold higher than final form Starter BST to play a reasonable role in Singles formats containing the likes of Metagross, Diancie, Cresselia, Registeel, and while Emergency Exit is much more exploitable in Doubles (and First Impression is much worse in Doubles due to the omnipresence of Protect) even there Golisopod has seen fringe play without being required to have a partner cleanse away its ability. "Would it be better without it?" Doesn't really matter as a question if it is already completely and demonstrably functional with it.
Nuzlocke players finding useful application in a challenge ruleset does not make the ability well designed for the PvE campaign as played under the normal stipulations (a description I feel comfortable using with that interview about TPC not wanting to engage with Nuzlockes and the like in official Social Media). (...)
The important part of Nuzlocke players finding a use for Golisopod has much less to do with anything specific to Nuzlockes as a format and much more to due with utilizing access to perfect information. By combining knowledge of enemy movesets with the ability to prepare Golisopod with proper defensive items like Sitrus Berry, Resist Berries, Pinch Berries, Assault Vest, and so on, they can ensure Golisopod activates Emergency Exit exactly when they want it to, giving them free switches into fragile allies. While a lot of the complete information parts of this are obviously not reasonable to assume for casual play, it tracks that Emergency Exit is more leverageable the more tangible information a player has about their opponent and their expected lines of play. Hence, a very high skill ceiling to pair with...
What it makes for is a joke ability that pseudo-intellectual smartasses try to justify as having skill expression against the brain dead CPU trainers, that us Plebians can't understand because we want our cool looking monsters to not actively kneecap us for using them. There's no intelligent integration of the ability into gameplay when you can barely play while using it, and to say otherwise is huffing one's own farts while putting naysayers into the "you're just petulant babies who want everything simplified" so as not to engage with the elephant in the room. Sure, this is a change that only competitive players and the "mobile gamer" idea of a non-thinking child or simpleton, and not an ability people want removed because it's devoid of agency even in casual play.
...an incredibly high skill floor,* at least relative to the average Pokemon. I'll just be blunt, I'm calling skill issue if the idea here is that is Golisopod unusably bad in vanilla ingame play because of Emergency Exit. Yes, Emergency Exit backfires. If you are not careful when using it, it will probably backfire on you more than it will benefit you. It also has completely unique benefits to ingame players who aren't using in battle items (one who presumably won't have access to resources like infinite Eject Buttons) for enabling safe pivots to frail allies.
Putting all of this together, Emergency Exit reads to me less like a representation of cowardice or a character flaw in need of overcoming, and instead it comes across to me more like a subversive and unintuitive style, a Knuckle Ball if you will. It's excessively difficult to execute successfully, requires a team to make changes that compromise their abilities elsewhere to support it, and is reliant on and subject to chaos as a constant of its existence. But it also has an incredibly high skill ceiling in use and brings otherwise completely inaccessible benefits and possibilities to the game. And bringing that into Champions on a Pokemon with the stats to not be obsoleted on sight by power creep and see the intelligent minds of the modern game come together to find a place for it would have brought me more joy than anything. besides perhaps watching something beat Floette at Worlds
Maybe competitive players (which is probably the main audience for new Mega abilities given they're only in Champions, the damn Comp simulator) dislike it because the game already involves a massive amount of skill to team build and play minute to minute without mons designed to take more work to achieve basic interaction.
Competitive Players dislike Emergency Exit because it is worse than other things. With Mega Evolutions, it's at this point expected for them to have an ability that gives an active and consistent positive effect on top of their gigantic stat boost, especially when trying to reach a par level in metagames forged by demons like Mega Floette, Mega Metagross, Mega Charizard Y, Mega Staraptor, and Mega Salamence. In VGC, if Mega Golisopod had Emergency Exit instead of Tough Claws, it would just be useless in a metagame sense. Folks don't want it to be useless.
Frankly though, and this is a bit of an early call, but it already kind of looks like Mega Golisopod is riding a wave of New Toy Syndrome that will see it end up a D-tier Mega Evolution at best anyway. That's good enough for all the content creators to ride the hype wave and post crazy Farigiraf OHKO calcs and play on the ladder with day one teams without too much difficulty. But as far as it's potential in OTS formats going forward, it's already kind of apparent that it doesn't have the sauce. And at that point, the difference between it being good but boring and bad but fascinating becomes kind of moot anyway. That's my perspective anyway, and I understand why it's not common. My ideal outcome was still some kind of altered form of Emergency Exit that also gives a trait that can help Golisopod keep up with the power level, I just didn't want to sacrifice the unique trait entirely on the alter of being Pretty Good on day 1 and a boring chud thereafter. (Though in BSS it appears to be quite the menace so they can have that dub)
I've always found it so much more intuitive to say that something with a high skill floor is easy to execute. Like the skill floor of a basic strategy is high because the height you reach while using it is high without you having to use skill to climb that distance, while the skill floor of a complex strategy is low because the height you reach while using it with no skill is essentially nowhere. You don't get any height unless you have some amount of skill to get you up there.
But it seems common parlance says high skill floor = hard and low skill floor = easy so i will follow this.
Fair enough angle for this thought. I'm at this point ambivalent towards underwhelming new exclusive tools that later get made into generic options, and to some extent I prefer the new tools themselves being generic and not super overwhelming so they can conceivably be given to other Pokemon later down the line, becoming just another small unique part of their tool kit. There's another conversation here about centralizing tools and how powerful new things need to be to not be outclassed by standard existing game elements.
Flavor-wise I think there's more of an argument here. Emergency Exit falls squarely under the category of abilities that very bluntly enforce a desired personality trait through gameplay, and when applied to a species broadly there does come a sense that the line between the qualities of that trait which apply to one specific individual and the represented collective get muddied. In my view, the reason Golisopod only ever has Emergency Exit is because players would seldom willingly choose to use it over anything else, and the designers wanted to enforce the intended gameplay gimmick, similar to Defeatist. I think that decision only holds more and more water the more I see people squirm at the thought of having to use it.
What I do see in the flavor of Emergency Exit is a more sincere reading of the reframing. First Impression is extremely blatant in it's synergy with Emergency Exit and is difficult to purposely avoid when training a Golisopod - it learns it upon evolving with only the pathetic Struggle Bug and Sand Attack prior. Gen 7 it learns Sucker Punch one level after evolving, and then it takes Golisopod another 11 levels to learn another Attacking move that isn't a priority attack with an activation condition. In other words, there's a period where Golisopod is very limited in its capacity to deal any damage to foes whatsoever without regaining the upper hand with another First Impression. TMs prevent this from being any kind of real problem in practice, but it seems tailored to show that this sort of surprise-attack focus is something very natural to the creature. To that end, Emergency Exit is simply and straightforwardly pragmatic - it enables Golisopod to do use a technique it's reliant upon a second time, to regain the upper hand in what developed into a dangerous situation. (Helpfully, wild Golisopod haven't been a part of the game to not break this illusion.)
As for Guzma, I'm unfamiliar with the anime depiction of him and don't really know how it's meant to come across. For the games nothing about his character is nearly as clearly spelled out as that theme though, and the writing leaves plenty of ways to interpret him and the ways Golisopod / Emergency Exit reflect him. An interpretation I've gleaned is that Guzma is essentially a noob-stomper. One thing I'm reminded of when watching newer plays take him on is that First Impression makes... a strong First Impression! Given it's an exclusive move to Golisopod and is never really explained elsewhere, it isn't really intuitive that it only works the first turn after it enters, that it has priority to make it move before your attacks, or hell even why it sometimes moves before you and then other times moves after you. Combined with a fairly obscure typing and a ton of bulk to make Emergency Exit proc at a somewhat random time when taking neutral damage, and I see many beginner players get completely thrown off facing Guzma. Knowing the mechanics behind Golisopod makes it much less menacing as a foe, but Guzma leverages a knowledge check to bulldoze weaker foes with a blitz of an opening volley to instill fear and disbelief in foes, a tactic that falls apart against foes resilient enough to continue fighting after a tough start or to those wise enough to maneuver around it entirely. It's not that he doesn't have the potential to achieve greater things, he's just hit a plateau he believes is a peak and underestimates the ability for others to rise to his challenge due to how easily he steamrolls most opponents.
Struggled to fit this above and will probably struggle to fit it below, but Emergency Exit also acts as a way to introduce the dynamics of mid-battle switch-ins at all. I am not very familiar with SuMo's AI in particular, but trainers throughout the entire series kind of infamously don't utilize mid-battle switching unless they are completely blanked. Emergency Exit's implementation is a way for the designers to implement these dynamics in a very "dumb" way, because the AI routines themselves don't need to be updated to account for it's usage, it can just automatically switch. (And as a perk, unlike active pivoting moves like U-turn and Volt Switch, it being activated in the aftermath of an opponent's attack largely prevents situations where a faster opponent uses a pivoting move against you and forces their teammate to eat a hit) Guzma being the only opponent who utilizes mid battle switches as a core part of his battles is a cool bit of personality that Emergency Exit specifically enables with unique ease and efficiency.
All that is why this description...
...is where you lose me entirely. You can be completely correct in understanding Emergency Exit as a purely detrimental element of Golisopod in any situation you have wanted to use it, but there is far too much in the way of connective tissue here to put it in a bucket alongside Truant or Slow Start, which both required an absurd stat stick be attached them to even attempt to approach usability and have always completely dead designs in PVP because even when the giant ball of stats they're attached to arrive, they can only reasonably be used alongside partners that scrub the existence of the ability. Golisopod didn't even need to crack a threshold higher than final form Starter BST to play a reasonable role in Singles formats containing the likes of Metagross, Diancie, Cresselia, Registeel, and while Emergency Exit is much more exploitable in Doubles (and First Impression is much worse in Doubles due to the omnipresence of Protect) even there Golisopod has seen fringe play without being required to have a partner cleanse away its ability. "Would it be better without it?" Doesn't really matter as a question if it is already completely and demonstrably functional with it.
The important part of Nuzlocke players finding a use for Golisopod has much less to do with anything specific to Nuzlockes as a format and much more to due with utilizing access to perfect information. By combining knowledge of enemy movesets with the ability to prepare Golisopod with proper defensive items like Sitrus Berry, Resist Berries, Pinch Berries, Assault Vest, and so on, they can ensure Golisopod activates Emergency Exit exactly when they want it to, giving them free switches into fragile allies. While a lot of the complete information parts of this are obviously not reasonable to assume for casual play, it tracks that Emergency Exit is more leverageable the more tangible information a player has about their opponent and their expected lines of play. Hence, a very high skill ceiling to pair with...
...an incredibly high skill floor,* at least relative to the average Pokemon. I'll just be blunt, I'm calling skill issue if the idea here is that is Golisopod unusably bad in vanilla ingame play because of Emergency Exit. Yes, Emergency Exit backfires. If you are not careful when using it, it will probably backfire on you more than it will benefit you. It also has completely unique benefits to ingame players who aren't using in battle items (one who presumably won't have access to resources like infinite Eject Buttons) for enabling safe pivots to frail allies.
Putting all of this together, Emergency Exit reads to me less like a representation of cowardice or a character flaw in need of overcoming, and instead it comes across to me more like a subversive and unintuitive style, a Knuckle Ball if you will. It's excessively difficult to execute successfully, requires a team to make changes that compromise their abilities elsewhere to support it, and is reliant on and subject to chaos as a constant of its existence. But it also has an incredibly high skill ceiling in use. And bringing that into Champions on a Pokemon with the stats to not be obsoleted on sight by power creep and see the intelligent minds of the modern game come together to find a place for it would have brought me more joy than anything. besides perhaps watching something beat Floette at Worlds
Competitive Players dislike Emergency Exit because it is worse than other things. With Mega Evolutions, it's at this point expected for them to have an ability that gives an active and consistent positive effect on top of their gigantic stat boost, especially when trying to reach a par level in metagames forged by demons like Mega Floette, Mega Metagross, Mega Charizard Y, Mega Staraptor, and Mega Salamence. In VGC, if Mega Golisopod had Emergency Exit instead of Tough Claws, it would just be useless in a metagame sense. Folks don't want it to be useless.
Frankly though, and this is a bit of an early call, but it already kind of looks like Mega Golisopod is riding a wave of New Toy Syndrome that will see it end up a D-tier Mega Evolution at best anyway. That's good enough for all the content creators to ride the hype wave and post crazy Farigiraf OHKO calcs and play on the ladder with day one teams without too much difficulty. But as far as it's potential in OTS formats going forward, it's already kind of apparent that it doesn't have the sauce. And at that point, the difference between it being good but boring and bad but fascinating becomes kind of moot anyway. That's my perspective anyway, and I understand why it's not common. My ideal outcome was still some kind of altered form of Emergency Exit that also gives a trait that can help Golisopod keep up with the power level, I just didn't want to sacrifice the unique trait entirely on the alter of being Pretty Good on day 1 and a boring chud thereafter. (Though in BSS it appears to be quite the menace so they can have that dub)
I've always found it so much more intuitive to say that something with a high skill floor is easy to execute. Like the skill floor of a basic strategy is high because the height you reach while using it is high without you having to use skill to climb that distance, while the skill floor of a complex strategy is low because the height you reach while using it with no skill is essentially nowhere. You don't get any height unless you have some amount of skill to get you up there.
But it seems common parlance says high skill floor = hard and low skill floor = easy so i will follow this.
interesting design thats bad > boring design thats good. i know this is smogon but have you guys thought about the fact these guys and can be engaged with beyond competitive
Fair enough angle for this thought. I'm at this point ambivalent towards underwhelming new exclusive tools that later get made into generic options, and to some extent I prefer the new tools themselves being generic and not super overwhelming so they can conceivably be given to other Pokemon later down the line, becoming just another small unique part of their tool kit. There's another conversation here about centralizing tools and how powerful new things need to be to not be outclassed by standard existing game elements.
Flavor-wise I think there's more of an argument here. Emergency Exit falls squarely under the category of abilities that very bluntly enforce a desired personality trait through gameplay, and when applied to a species broadly there does come a sense that the line between the qualities of that trait which apply to one specific individual and the represented collective get muddied. In my view, the reason Golisopod only ever has Emergency Exit is because players would seldom willingly choose to use it over anything else, and the designers wanted to enforce the intended gameplay gimmick, similar to Defeatist. I think that decision only holds more and more water the more I see people squirm at the thought of having to use it.
What I do see in the flavor of Emergency Exit is a more sincere reading of the reframing. First Impression is extremely blatant in it's synergy with Emergency Exit and is difficult to purposely avoid when training a Golisopod - it learns it upon evolving with only the pathetic Struggle Bug and Sand Attack prior. Gen 7 it learns Sucker Punch one level after evolving, and then it takes Golisopod another 11 levels to learn another Attacking move that isn't a priority attack with an activation condition. In other words, there's a period where Golisopod is very limited in its capacity to deal any damage to foes whatsoever without regaining the upper hand with another First Impression. TMs prevent this from being any kind of real problem in practice, but it seems tailored to show that this sort of surprise-attack focus is something very natural to the creature. To that end, Emergency Exit is simply and straightforwardly pragmatic - it enables Golisopod to do use a technique it's reliant upon a second time, to regain the upper hand in what developed into a dangerous situation. (Helpfully, wild Golisopod haven't been a part of the game to not break this illusion.)
As for Guzma, I'm unfamiliar with the anime depiction of him and don't really know how it's meant to come across. For the games nothing about his character is nearly as clearly spelled out as that theme though, and the writing leaves plenty of ways to interpret him and the ways Golisopod / Emergency Exit reflect him. An interpretation I've gleaned is that Guzma is essentially a noob-stomper. One thing I'm reminded of when watching newer plays take him on is that First Impression makes... a strong First Impression! Given it's an exclusive move to Golisopod and is never really explained elsewhere, it isn't really intuitive that it only works the first turn after it enters, that it has priority to make it move before your attacks, or hell even why it sometimes moves before you and then other times moves after you. Combined with a fairly obscure typing and a ton of bulk to make Emergency Exit proc at a somewhat random time when taking neutral damage, and I see many beginner players get completely thrown off facing Guzma. Knowing the mechanics behind Golisopod makes it much less menacing as a foe, but Guzma leverages a knowledge check to bulldoze weaker foes with a blitz of an opening volley to instill fear and disbelief in foes, a tactic that falls apart against foes resilient enough to continue fighting after a tough start or to those wise enough to maneuver around it entirely. It's not that he doesn't have the potential to achieve greater things, he's just hit a plateau he believes is a peak and underestimates the ability for others to rise to his challenge due to how easily he steamrolls most opponents.
Struggled to fit this above and will probably struggle to fit it below, but Emergency Exit also acts as a way to introduce the dynamics of mid-battle switch-ins at all. I am not very familiar with SuMo's AI in particular, but trainers throughout the entire series kind of infamously don't utilize mid-battle switching unless they are completely blanked. Emergency Exit's implementation is a way for the designers to implement these dynamics in a very "dumb" way, because the AI routines themselves don't need to be updated to account for it's usage, it can just automatically switch. (And as a perk, unlike active pivoting moves like U-turn and Volt Switch, it being activated in the aftermath of an opponent's attack largely prevents situations where a faster opponent uses a pivoting move against you and forces their teammate to eat a hit) Guzma being the only opponent who utilizes mid battle switches as a core part of his battles is a cool bit of personality that Emergency Exit specifically enables with unique ease and efficiency.
All that is why this description...
...is where you lose me entirely. You can be completely correct in understanding Emergency Exit as a purely detrimental element of Golisopod in any situation you have wanted to use it, but there is far too much in the way of connective tissue here to put it in a bucket alongside Truant or Slow Start, which both required an absurd stat stick be attached them to even attempt to approach usability and have always completely dead designs in PVP because even when the giant ball of stats they're attached to arrive, they can only reasonably be used alongside partners that scrub the existence of the ability. Golisopod didn't even need to crack a threshold higher than final form Starter BST to play a reasonable role in Singles formats containing the likes of Metagross, Diancie, Cresselia, Registeel, and while Emergency Exit is much more exploitable in Doubles (and First Impression is much worse in Doubles due to the omnipresence of Protect) even there Golisopod has seen fringe play without being required to have a partner cleanse away its ability. "Would it be better without it?" Doesn't really matter as a question if it is already completely and demonstrably functional with it.
The important part of Nuzlocke players finding a use for Golisopod has much less to do with anything specific to Nuzlockes as a format and much more to due with utilizing access to perfect information. By combining knowledge of enemy movesets with the ability to prepare Golisopod with proper defensive items like Sitrus Berry, Resist Berries, Pinch Berries, Assault Vest, and so on, they can ensure Golisopod activates Emergency Exit exactly when they want it to, giving them free switches into fragile allies. While a lot of the complete information parts of this are obviously not reasonable to assume for casual play, it tracks that Emergency Exit is more leverageable the more tangible information a player has about their opponent and their expected lines of play. Hence, a very high skill ceiling to pair with...
...an incredibly high skill floor,* at least relative to the average Pokemon. I'll just be blunt, I'm calling skill issue if the idea here is that is Golisopod unusably bad in vanilla ingame play because of Emergency Exit. Yes, Emergency Exit backfires. If you are not careful when using it, it will probably backfire on you more than it will benefit you. It also has completely unique benefits to ingame players who aren't using in battle items (one who presumably won't have access to resources like infinite Eject Buttons) for enabling safe pivots to frail allies.
Putting all of this together, Emergency Exit reads to me less like a representation of cowardice or a character flaw in need of overcoming, and instead it comes across to me more like a subversive and unintuitive style, a Knuckle Ball if you will. It's excessively difficult to execute successfully, requires a team to make changes that compromise their abilities elsewhere to support it, and is reliant on and subject to chaos as a constant of its existence. But it also has an incredibly high skill ceiling in use and brings otherwise completely inaccessible benefits and possibilities to the game. And bringing that into Champions on a Pokemon with the stats to not be obsoleted on sight by power creep and see the intelligent minds of the modern game come together to find a place for it would have brought me more joy than anything. besides perhaps watching something beat Floette at Worlds
Competitive Players dislike Emergency Exit because it is worse than other things. With Mega Evolutions, it's at this point expected for them to have an ability that gives an active and consistent positive effect on top of their gigantic stat boost, especially when trying to reach a par level in metagames forged by demons like Mega Floette, Mega Metagross, Mega Charizard Y, Mega Staraptor, and Mega Salamence. In VGC, if Mega Golisopod had Emergency Exit instead of Tough Claws, it would just be useless in a metagame sense. Folks don't want it to be useless.
Frankly though, and this is a bit of an early call, but it already kind of looks like Mega Golisopod is riding a wave of New Toy Syndrome that will see it end up a D-tier Mega Evolution at best anyway. That's good enough for all the content creators to ride the hype wave and post crazy Farigiraf OHKO calcs and play on the ladder with day one teams without too much difficulty. But as far as it's potential in OTS formats going forward, it's already kind of apparent that it doesn't have the sauce. And at that point, the difference between it being good but boring and bad but fascinating becomes kind of moot anyway. That's my perspective anyway, and I understand why it's not common. My ideal outcome was still some kind of altered form of Emergency Exit that also gives a trait that can help Golisopod keep up with the power level, I just didn't want to sacrifice the unique trait entirely on the alter of being Pretty Good on day 1 and a boring chud thereafter. (Though in BSS it appears to be quite the menace so they can have that dub)
I've always found it so much more intuitive to say that something with a high skill floor is easy to execute. Like the skill floor of a basic strategy is high because the height you reach while using it is high without you having to use skill to climb that distance, while the skill floor of a complex strategy is low because the height you reach while using it with no skill is essentially nowhere. You don't get any height unless you have some amount of skill to get you up there.
But it seems common parlance says high skill floor = hard and low skill floor = easy so i will follow this.
Okay, since you responded exactly how I expected you to on the skill expression point, I am going to lay this out as plainly as I can. Your preferred definition of a high skill floor does not apply to Emergency Exit Golisopod, because Emergency Exit as a mechanic requires you to take very specific play patterns leveraging perfect information, something you only have in single player because by your own admission the Enemy AI is pathetically simple in regards to switching if not its action in general. One reason Golisopod falls flat in PvP is because your opponents can be predicted based on risk-weighing for different cause-effect outcomes on a given turn, but never KNOWN with the same degree of certainty.
Compounding this is that if you play Golisopod sub-optimally, it MASSIVELY backfires on your team's performance. The anime even has a gag for his where Golisopod dips from a relatively even match up against Ash's Torracat and a dragged-in Scizor (since Guzma isn't shown with any other Pokemon) gets 1-shot while contributing very little to the battle. This is a succinct depiction of the issue: the need to micromanage Golisopod's HP for the sake of Emergency Exit not screwing you over requires putting in more effort than average just to achieve the standard level of interaction. Sure, there's a high skill ceiling in that well-timed Emergency Exit can give you momentum you would not see typically, but if anything goes wrong (even when planned to the second, accuracy checks, stat/status procs, and crits can always rear their head) you are worse off than using something completely vanilla.
Yes, on paper, this is good game design, rewarding the player for mastering a difficult mechanic while punishing them for mindlessly employing it In practice: Pokemon in-game (the ideal use case for this option) is braindead such that it doesn't reward you in practice because you end up putting in more work to win a battle barely any faster or with less resources expended than the majority of generic playstyles unless you are deliberately playing with a handicap. That skill ceiling is meaningless when the learning and prep does not reward that practice with better/easier results in return, doubly so if you are employing default features (as in TPC clearly expects you to use them and thus they are the design to evaluate) like Switch mode and items.
"Would it be better without it?" Doesn't really matter as a question if it is already completely and demonstrably functional with it.
The hell do you mean "doesn't really matter as a question" just because by your (frankly generous) metric, it is "demonstrably functional" in RU and VGC? This is like saying my car struggling to make a 20 mile drive to work in an hour doesn't matter about being better, because it still can get me there on time if I put in more work to deal with it by getting up and leaving earlier.
And bringing that into Champions on a Pokemon with the stats to not be obsoleted on sight by power creep and see the intelligent minds of the modern game come together to find a place for it would have brought me more joy than anything.
Have you considered the much more likely scenario of the "intelligent minds" playing the game skipping Golisopod because their intelligence tells them it's not worth considering the effort on 85% of teams built to compete? This just reminds me of the skilled Roy joke in the Smash community: a plausible (and often more likely) explanation is that the player skill gapping their opponent doesn't change that the character sucks. Creators make a LOT of content out of using suboptimal units or strategies where the point is to handicap themselves and demonstrate ability overcoming that disadvantage, not present it as "good actually if you're smart enough." Frankly I find this angle presumptuous because it's assuming that this strategy has an intelligent use case that just has to be found by someone smarter than the person making the claim, as opposed to the simpler idea that maybe there isn't a worthwhile niche for this in Champions.
interesting design thats bad > boring design thats good. i know this is smogon but have you guys thought about the fact these guys and can be engaged with beyond competitive
"Interesting design" is doing a lot of nebulous lifting both by assuming the concept (a Pokemon that forces itself out and deprives you of actions without very specific play) or the experience of using it is engaging instead of irritating. It also actively gets in the way of the Pokemon having other playstyles (Boosted Sweeping and Defensive tanking are both undercut by mandatory switching), so it's not even opening new options so much as railroading you into a specific, possibly less used niche at the starting gate
Being bad insinuates it just isn't effective, it's not interesting either because it robs the player of agency and delivers the same result as 50% of other options when you make concessions to use it properly.
i know this is smogon but have you guys thought about the fact these guys and can be engaged with beyond competitive
Have you considered the much more likely scenario of the "intelligent minds" playing the game skipping Golisopod because their intelligence tells them it's not worth considering the effort on 85% of teams built to compete? This just reminds me of the skilled Roy joke in the Smash community: a plausible (and often more likely) explanation is that the player skill gapping their opponent doesn't change that the character sucks. Creators make a LOT of content out of using suboptimal units or strategies where the point is to handicap themselves and demonstrate ability overcoming that disadvantage, not present it as "good actually if you're smart enough." Frankly I find this angle presumptuous because it's assuming that this strategy has an intelligent use case that just has to be found by someone smarter than the person making the claim, as opposed to the simpler idea that maybe there isn't a worthwhile niche for this in Champions.
If performance in OU/VGC is the only thing that matters when judging a Pokemon, then why is it so vitally important that Mega Golisopod is viable there? There are too many Pokemon for them all to be viable in a single metagame. Viability in a given metagame is largely a zero-sum game and that is doubly true for Megas, so Mega Golisopod being good just means it forces something else out. What's the point of abandoning flavor and theming in the name of keeping up if it doesn't even increase the number of viable options? If anything, the absurd rate of powercreep reduces the number of Pokemon which have the potential to be viable in VGC because it widens the gap between the Pokemon which are the designated favorites and the ones which aren't.
"Interesting design" is doing a lot of nebulous lifting both by assuming the concept (a Pokemon that forces itself out and deprives you of actions without very specific play) or the experience of using it is engaging instead of irritating. It also actively gets in the way of the Pokemon having other playstyles (Boosted Sweeping and Defensive tanking are both undercut by mandatory switching), so it's not even opening new options so much as railroading you into a specific, possibly less used niche at the starting gate
Being bad insinuates it just isn't effective, it's not interesting either because it robs the player of agency and delivers the same result as 50% of other options when you make concessions to use it properly.
Golisopod itself may have fewer options but it makes it so there is more variety in the game as a whole. There are already other options for physical boosting or defensive Water or Bug types, but a tanky pivoting priority revenge killer is unusual. I think Golisopod being able to achieve above-average competitive performance (at least in singles) with an ability that has a heavy detriment is interesting. It's a difficult design challenge which turned out pretty well.
One example which shows it off well is this replay, in which Emergency Exit allows Golisopod to force a KO on turn 26 by making the opponent choose between getting KO'd by Liquidation and allowing it to pivot through Rocky Helmet damage: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7ru-356365
The conversation was about the intersection of flavor and gameplay but mostly about gameplay, and you made zero effort to clarify your stance in your previous response to said conversation to prioritize being snarky.
Also it doesn't even work for word building because, as pika pal already pointed out, Emergency Exit completely contradicts Dex entries about Golisopod and even the portrayal of Guzma's character in the games.
The conversation was about the intersection of flavor and gameplay but mostly about gameplay, and you made zero effort to clarify your stance in your previous response to said conversation to prioritize being snarky.
yeah because i think its making mountains outta molehills over having an iota of friction in a pokemon game. golisopod is easy as fuck to use in casual the only time youd give a fuck is if youre sweaty and by then you wouldnt be using golisopod youd be looking at smogons in game tierlist or something and thats fine. some pokemon are intentionally silly and more frustrating to use Thats The Point
also what the hell do we mean contradicting the pokedex. the entire point is that the dex is part of the front. its an extremely strong pokemon in world that still clings to its cowardly ways... thats why guzma has it before anything characterization wise happens lol its a representation of who he was (as his partner pokemon hes implied to have since a kid) and a trait he cant just shed away entirely but he keeps going despite it
but none of that matters go have fun thinking about pokemon ecology and make a golisopod oc with their adventures instead or something
If performance in OU/VGC is the only thing that matters when judging a Pokemon, then why is it so vitally important that Mega Golisopod is viable there? There are too many Pokemon for them all to be viable in a single metagame. Viability in a given metagame is largely a zero-sum game and that is doubly true for Megas, so Mega Golisopod being good just means it forces something else out. What's the point of abandoning flavor and theming in the name of keeping up if it doesn't even increase the number of viable options? If anything, the absurd rate of powercreep reduces the number of Pokemon which have the potential to be viable in VGC because it widens the gap between the Pokemon which are the designated favorites and the ones which aren't.
Golisopod itself may have fewer options but it makes it so there is more variety in the game as a whole. There are already other options for physical boosting or defensive Water or Bug types, but a tanky pivoting priority revenge killer is unusual. I think Golisopod being able to achieve above-average competitive performance (at least in singles) with an ability that has a heavy detriment is interesting. It's a difficult design challenge which turned out pretty well.
One example which shows it off well is this replay, in which Emergency Exit allows Golisopod to force a KO on turn 26 by making the opponent choose between getting KO'd by Liquidation and allowing it to pivot through Rocky Helmet damage: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen7ru-356365
The point I was very directly responding to in the section you quoted from was about a hypothetical EE Mega Golisopod IN CHAMPIONS (the competitive hub) that is focused on VGC, and the previous poster wishing to see "intelligent minds" in the modern game find a niche for it in that space. That statement is assigning a clear importance to performance in a competitive environment at least in the context of this section of the post, hence why my reply was focusing on Golisopod's viability being INCREDIBLY handicapped by Emergency Exit, not simply a "different" tool that requires a lot of work to find big brain strats for.
The issue I take with this description of Golisopod as a"Tanky Pivoting Priority Revenge Killer" is that it's not simply built to excel in this role, but its ability actively kneecaps it from doing anything else, regardless of whether it helps in that aspect. Things like Landorus-T's infamous set variety comes about as a result of it having a very synergistic set of traits in its kit (that I refuse to believe were 100% planned to be such) that give it adequate performance in a variety of roles. The fundamental issue that Emergency Exit keeps coming back to is that it does not create options, it forces scenarios; if my opponent's healthy mon attacks into my 75% HP Golisopod, I don't get to act that turn in any manner besides clicking a Priority move since the end of the turn is going to involve me having to switch something else in regardless. Completely taking away Golisopod's action if EE triggers before its turn is the most damning aspect of it frankly, because it's in the opponent's hand if you get to make a move when denying an action is a MASSIVE boon in any form of Pokemon Battle (hence Fake Out's ubiquity and everyone's hatred of Full Paralyze, Sleep, etc).
I have no major input on the Tours game, but I would point to the fact that interaction was still contingent on reading the opponent to get there (no extra Spikes or attack into the Mismagius in favor of Synthesis) on Pod's first entry (assume Zen Headbutt over something like Wood Hammer has a particular target I'm not aware of). The interaction was interesting but I'm not convinced Emergency Exit was necessary to get a win considering how commanding the position was on Turn 20 after the first Pivot into Mismagius on Chesnaught.
I am still personally unconvinced that Golisopod is succeeding because of EE more often than in spite of it.
yeah because i think its making mountains outta molehills over having an iota of friction in a pokemon game. golisopod is easy as fuck to use in casual the only time youd give a fuck is if youre sweaty and by then you wouldnt be using golisopod youd be looking at smogons in game tierlist or something and thats fine. some pokemon are intentionally silly and more frustrating to use Thats The Point
also what the hell do we mean contradicting the pokedex. the entire point is that the dex is part of the front. its an extremely strong pokemon in world that still clings to its cowardly ways... thats why guzma has it before anything characterization wise happens lol its a representation of who he was (as his partner pokemon hes implied to have since a kid) and a trait he cant just shed away entirely but he keeps going despite it
but none of that matters go have fun thinking about pokemon ecology and make a golisopod oc with their adventures instead or something
What you call friction I call inconvenience. Maybe there's a more complex conversation to be had about the concept but every time I encounter this term in a forum or chat room, it's someone trying to justify a bad QoL or counterproductive design decision as actually good for the game like Gen 1's bag system or Zelda 1's lack of a Map to navigate by because it makes things harder and more challenge is better. The majority of players are not going to engage with a game mechanic that actively feels bad to play with (which is an important distinction from being more difficult), something I wholeheartedly endorse in the case of Golisopod because Emergency Exit means it is always going to be less convenient or effective to play with unless you are playing with specific stipulations that influence how you play with EVERY Pokemon such as the previous Nuzlocke example.
EDIT: One other aspect that just occurred to me is that Golisopod has ANOTHER edge case that makes its ability flat out detrimental in casual play; Emergency Exit in a Wild Encounter counts as FLEEING from the encounter rather than pivoting Pod out as in trainer battles (functioning more like Teleport than U-Turn). So imagine you want to leverage Pod's Bulk while doing something like SOS hunting or trying to catch a particularly difficult opponent such as the Tapus, a scenario where you likely have to deal with enduring damage while damaging the opponent or simply ending the battle is not inherent progress. It means unless you bring Pod in pre-damaged or ensure it is never in a scenario where it can drop below 50% without being KO'd outright, you run the risk of being forced out of the encounter and having to re-engage/hunt while redoing damage or chaining. In the case of Nuzlockes for example, as a challenge run where Pod has proven useful with EE, making sure Pod doesn't do this on your allotted capture for a location is also pretty important. I would argue THIS scenario I just described for a challenge run is a bit more of a case for ideal Friction because it actively involves weighing an inconvenience against a benefit yielded if you deal with it, rather than just making it more work to yield the same gameplay loop as other entries.
"Contradicting the Pokedex" is in reference to a repeatedly referenced pattern of Golisopod as "doing anything to win" while not remotely alluding to its tendency to avoid or bail on battles. People often joke about the Pokedex being written by a few kids because of the absurd factoids in some mons' biology such as Magcargo or Lanturn. but the world building does nothing to suggest that the Dex entries are not based on professionally documented or sourced information, especially when it describes group/herd and life-spanning behaviors after catching a single specimen. With that in mind, you are telling me that Golisopod did not have any kind of retreating habit come up compared to their extreme battle prowess with claws and cutting, or regularly coming into conflict with a "test your might" species as Grapploct is described to the point of being mutual predators? You're telling me that Golisopod as an entire species has managed to maintain this as a front to the degree that scientific study believes the behavior at face value instead of as a pattern to deceive other Pokemon?
If anything, EE comes across as an ability they gave specifically to mirror Guzma's characterization rather than a species-common behavior, which as Karx and I have mentioned, doesn't feel like it comes through very effectively with his game character compared to his anime depiction where they tell you on its face that his development leads him to stop behaving that way.
it feels like the new megas are a result of them noticing that they made the old megas too powerful so they're trying to lower the power level, which is a good idea, if only they actually nerfed the old megas properly. kill zardy now
You think this is a gotcha but I legitimately have problems with this. Uneven difficulty and friction is one of my biggest pet peeves in games. If Pokémon is supposed to be a casual game with a lower difficulty then that's fine, but it should he consistent about it. Why does Golisopod even have a good BST for a joke mon. It was clearly built to be reminiscent of the Magikarp to Gyarados journey just to turn around to play a cruel joke on players who put in the time and effort to raise a Wimpod. Basically a subversion for subversion's sake, which is never a good philosophy for a creative.
i do not think its that serious. that sounds funny though. in my authoritarian regime everyone will have a pokemon oc and if you dont i send you to the dungeon
i do not think its that serious. that sounds funny though. in my authoritarian regime everyone will have a pokemon oc and if you dont i send you to the dungeon
Right, I had to catch up with 5 pages of talking, so I didn't wanna bother looking up who posted about it. I knew you'd show up eventually. Jimothy Cool also had made a video about it, so you're not the only one who feels this way.
You articulated your point very well, but I'm fundamentally against it.
First, because for it to work, you need to rely on one of modern mons' most glaring issues. Everybody got great coverage for little to no reason.
Gengar used to be noteworthy because of its coverage. Now it's just another random fast special attacker with access to a bunch of TMs inexplicably. THIS is why Gengar fell off.
Second, for every Gengar-tier mon that has the coverage and stats to go without STAB, there are 20 mons that don't.
Having to rely on Hidden Power for STAB is truly dire and something I wouldn't wish on most mons. Pair that with the double whammy of potentially not having good coverage or stats, and you end up with gutter trash such as Illumise.
Personally, I believe that coverage should be toned down significantly, and types should have exclusive moves that could add wrinkles to their games for STAB options and make each type stand out more.
Pairing that up with signature moves, the combination of certain coverage options, and each mon would be able to have more niches to fit in and provide something unique, even if they're not particularly great in competitive.
Even though we both agree that Game Freak lost the plot, we have entirely different views on how to fix the power creep issue in these games. So no, I'm not presenting you with a "moldy argument".
IT STILL DOESN'T HAVE THOSE!?
That'd probably make it worse.
I'd nerf it to 80% accuracy tbh. Keep the iconic flinch chance, but add some actual risk to it instead of being the premier move of choice for " :rayquaza: it we ball"
I think that's a sign of a greater problem. Namely how wack the balancing of these games are. Not a lot of people are actively going to go full boomer and go back to old gens, so the current meta being stupid as all hell isn't a great look.
I might as well state my unpopular opinion for the day while I'm at it since I've covered it in three replies already.
They need to nerf the shit out of a LOT of things and they've been way outta pocket for over a decade now.
I know I'm super late to this because I haven't looked at these forums for like a month, but anyway:
I think something that I'd like with coverage moves is for them to be more unique per pokemon. I dislike how some types are so common of a coverage type that it feels like over half the pokemon will have a move of that type, it gives such a massive disadvantage to anything with that weakness and it gets especially bad when they have a weakness to multiple of those types. Fighting and Dark in particular are super common coverage moves, and ground (particularly earthquake) and rock are also very common. In comparison, types like Fire and Water are much rarer as coverage moves. But also, there's a bunch of types that just about always get coverage of a specific type, which I dislike even more. The problem with that is that it makes some defensive types lose their advantage over pokemon of a type they're supposed to win against defensively. Grass types might as well be losing to Water defensively since every Water type has Ice coverage, and Flying types might as lose against Ground types since every Ground type gets Rock coverage. Obviously it makes sense that a lot of pokemon of those types would have those coverage moves, since it makes sense flavor-wise, but I still wish coverage options were more diverse than that. I think it would be a lot more interesting if pokemon of each type had different coverage options instead of the same types of coverage; for instance, a bunch of Water types wouldn't get Ice type coverage, or a bunch of Ground types wouldn't get Rock coverage, and instead have some different types instead as coverage. This both fixes the issues I mentioned earlier, and also makes pokemon of each type play slightly more differently from each other than they do now as they'd have different coverage options instead of every Ground type using Rock Slide or Stone Edge.
