You didn't think of it because the only Ride mon from gen 7 was Mudsdale, all the others in the originals were preexisting mons (Tauros, Stoutland, Lapras, Charizard, Sharpedo, Machamp). USUM added Solgaleo/Lunala, but also Mantine. And Mudsdale seems like it was probably a fairly late change, given the terrain you need to use it on is the same as the Rhyhorn area in XY.
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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
"this is a pokemon forum."
"you have badges for using the pokemon forum."
? what did you mean by this
It's been talked about, but yeah, this particularly annoyed me. There was a limited number of Gen VII mons, but they could definitely have included mainly VII mons if they'd tried. The decision to make 4 of the 7 mons Gen 1 is just GF forcing nostalgia instead of trying to develop other portions of the franchise.
unpopular opinion we should all love beheeyem
Said person was giving a dismissive reaction ("sir, this is a Wendy's") to Karxrida's dissection of the Charizard popularity/overexposure over its use of the term "revisionist history" seemingly sounding too serious, despite being on a Pokemon forum where that topic is obviously relevant and having written an equally long post on the subject in the same conversation. Personally I don't find the term loaded enough to warrant that kind of dismissal.
It feels bad faith. "I get to make a long reply but you making a long one arguing against mine is taking it too seriously"
The 3DS games were truly awful when it came to representing their new Pokemon. I seriously wonder if they did not have faith in their own original designs, or if it was a "fix" inspired by people hating on Black and White.
It was probably more of a knee-jerk reaction to BW. However, iirc, one of the games did coincide with a franchise anniversary milestone.
I won't even get to the point of them completely missing the point on why Gen 5 got hated in the first place, though.
I'd gently push back on this for the Alola titles. All the Totem Pokemon were Gen VII species* when they very easily could have not been and in general Alola is a LOT better at showing off its native species than Kalos ever was - there's numerous Alola Pokemon belonging to NPCs dotted around the overworld and there's lots of little ways they're given prominence (think of how XY's scripted first encounter was, of all things, Pidgey while SM's scripted first encounter is a Pikipek and in USUM it's a Grubbin). There's also the way in which Wimpod has to be chased down and Crabrawler has a unique encounter method to draw further attention to them both.
It kind of makes sense for the Ride feature to mostly utilise old species, though. "You can ride Tauros and Lapras in this game" is a much greater selling point than "you can ride [species you've never heard of] in this game". It's not a coincidence that Mudsdale comes late.
*by which I'm counting Alolan Raticate as a new species, if I don't include this disclaimer some pedant will inevitably jump down my throat - at the very least it's a new form
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Ok, I say this as someone whose favorite thing about new gens is new mons, but maybe, just maybe, GameFreak incorporates lots of older mons, especially Kanto, because most Pokemon fans like seeing them actually.
The flying ride in SUMO/USUM should have been Miltank using its udders as jets by shooting massive amounts of milk out of them.
I absolutely love that they referenced stuff like this with Baxcalibur's animations. Maybe an unpopular opinion but I love how they just allowed it to be goofy like a lot of the kaiju media was instead of just doing the usual "super cool no jokes allowed tough guy dragon" thing a lot of people apparently wanted.
Movepools, in the main game, should go back to being just a little bit shit. Not full on RBYGSC level garbage, but you shouldn't get literally everything you need just be leveling up, give me a reason to be hyped when I find a good TM or a new move tutor rather than going 'That'd be cool if I didn't already have a good move'. Give me ground types that are stuck with Drill Run and Stomping Tantrum unless you go out of your way to find the Earthquake TM, give me grass types that are using Seed Bomb until you find the Power Whip tutor, give me a reason to want to find these things.
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I agree completely and I think that movepool power creep has been a huge factor in the modern games feeling easier.
Let’s compare Grass starters as an example. In FRLG Bulbasaur learns 35 power Vine Whip at level 10 and 55 power Razor Leaf at level 22, assuming it’s been evolved into Ivysaur.
In SV Sprigatito learns 60 power Bite at level 7, 60 power Magical Leaf at level 13 and 80 power Seed Bomb at level 20, assuming it’s been evolved into Floragato.
For a direct comparison Bulbasaur in SV learns Vine Whip at level 3, Razor Leaf at level 12 and Seed Bomb at level 18.
Pokemon learn 60+ power STAB moves way too early in the modern games imo.
It’s such an insane contrast going from SV into Crystal and Emerald and getting no base 60 attacks until level 20 and being lucky to get anything close to 80 BP until gym 6/7.
Like it feels like cheating with how quick you get them, makes early Earthquake in Platinum or early Scald in SUMO look balances
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(Post edited for clarification)
To me, movepools were rarely an issue of what is available and more of an issue of when you get access to the best available moves for your Pokémon. This was most evident with all manner of Water-Types benefitting disproportionately from the existence of the Surf HM, but as a general rule of thumb, I feel like even the games with weaker movepool also see that reflected in the NPCs you’ll be battling. In more simple words, if you’re stuck in an environment with bad movepools, that will usually apply to at least the supermajority of non-major NPCs too.
Situations where the expected power level of the available Pokémon and moves isn’t balanced, on the other hand, is a more significant issue because it de-incentivizes the player from wanting to try out new Pokémon and strategies they may not have used before. Some older starters can get upgrades to their STAB noticeably later than you’d expect to see relative to the power level of the part of the game you’re at, and this is a major part of why I almost always pick the Water starters in any game with HMs. Even outside of starters, getting good moves early doesn’t mean as much as it could if you have to wait sometimes 20+ or even 30+ levels to be able to upgrade on that later, because during that mid-game stretch you can and will feel that drop in power compared to your opponents.
To me, movepools were rarely an issue of what is available and more of an issue of when you get access to the best available moves for your Pokémon. This was most evident with all manner of Water-Types benefitting disproportionately from the existence of the Surf HM, but as a general rule of thumb, I feel like even the games with weaker movepool also see that reflected in the NPCs you’ll be battling. In more simple words, if you’re stuck in an environment with bad movepools, that will usually apply to at least the supermajority of non-major NPCs too.
Situations where the expected power level of the available Pokémon and moves isn’t balanced, on the other hand, is a more significant issue because it de-incentivizes the player from wanting to try out new Pokémon and strategies they may not have used before. Some older starters can get upgrades to their STAB noticeably later than you’d expect to see relative to the power level of the part of the game you’re at, and this is a major part of why I almost always pick the Water starters in any game with HMs. Even outside of starters, getting good moves early doesn’t mean as much as it could if you have to wait sometimes 20+ or even 30+ levels to be able to upgrade on that later, because during that mid-game stretch you can and will feel that drop in power compared to your opponents.
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I say it regularly, but I genuinely do not think GF has any idea of what they want game balance to look like, casually or competitively. Movepools are an obvious example of that, there's plenty of reasonably similar mons where one gets a bunch of coverage and the other gets STAB+Body Slam, but it goes for everything. If you asked one of the designers "How many neutral attacks should it take to KO a gym leader's ace in the midgame?", they not only would not have an answer, I suspect they've never even considered the question. "What Speed is competitively viable, what is serviceable, and what is slow enough for trick room?" "What power level is appropriate for a Gym Leader TM before badge 4?" These are not questions that need hard rules for the answers, but they are questions which designers should be thinking about.
When looking at other games, which will adjust recharges or resource costs by 1% sometimes, it really feels like Pokemon chooses things almost at random.
When looking at other games, which will adjust recharges or resource costs by 1% sometimes, it really feels like Pokemon chooses things almost at random.
Yeah, the levels when they get moves are a huge factor.
I believe they should kind of work like this as a general rule of thumb:
Moves over Lv. 60 are overkill, the main story hardly ever allows people to get them.
Naturally, some mons can get some stuff earlier or later, but that's a good tool to give them identities. (Like Butterfree getting a ton of status early)
Which gen do y'all think nailed this level curve best? Because honestly, up to Gen 3, level up movesets were abysmal for the most part.
while it didnt start the trend i think TRs solidified the view of pokemon "needing" to have good movesets. they put them there bc the devs want a long term open world-esque grind, but know that design creates tedium so they design pokemon in a way that they only need 1 TR to finish the moveset. weird clashing design choices
A somewhat important wrinkle that impacted a lot of Pokemon / moves from generation 1 for a lot longer than would be expected or rational is the phantom carryover of assumed Gen 1 move learning without relevant mechanics. Between Trapping moves like Wrap and Fire Spin, certain bad stat boosting moves like Amnesia and Agility, and High Crit Rate moves like Slash, many of these moves took until Gens 7, 8, and even 9 to be placed in level up movepools somewhere fitting for their power level. Funny enough, Razor Leaf on the Bulbasaur was moved forward to Level 22 from Level 30 in RBY, making it an exception that proves the rule; despite it getting it at a very normal time, Chikorita getting it extremely early, and other later Pokemon getting it at super reasonable levels, the Bellsprout line still learns the move at an incredibly late level 44 in SV.
I actually think Pokemon games had a remarkably consistent and crafted ingame balance for the earlier generations. RBY, RSE, and BW1 stand out to me as games that feel carefully considered for average players. The big reason that Pokemon doesn't tend to ask these kinds of design questions with high precision is that the player possibility space in Pokemon is just way higher than in other RPGs due to the sheer quantity of potential party members, and it's not a coincidence that these specific games are the ones with the highest proportions of newly introduced Pokemon in their regional Pokedexes. When Pokemon are added into games, traits like their base stats, typing, evolution requirements, EXP group, and more are completely locked, and while movepools aren't completely locked there tends to be a soft limit on the flexibility they have in regards to overhauls. Working in existing designs is always possible in these games, but having fewer and fewer viable levers to tweak is always a relevant issue to ingame balance and consistently leads to legacy carryover being the direct cause for ingame imbalances. (Think BW2's potential for super early Lucario)
By SwSh, the designers pretty much gave up on giving Pokemon deliberately crafted ingame functions. A trend you'll see when looking at movepools that change from USUM to SwSh is that moves became directly sorted in order by Base Power rather than being learned in a specifically chosen order, which in a few corner cases leads to confusing outcomes. Pokemon also forgo precisely designed progession in their level up movesets for moves learned every 5 levels, and with the move relearner being definitively changed from a resource dependent expert player gold mine to a quality of life feature that invalidates level up moves when used correctly it's hard to really care that much. With 400+ mon regional pokedexes becoming the norm, I can't help but resign myself to understanding this decision.
Finally, maybe the unpopular opinion embedded in all of this, but I think GF had a pretty strong grasp on creating new gameplay designs for Competitive by Gen 7 and the vast majority of Pokemon from that point have something pretty cool going on.
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GameFreaks definitely has a clear pattern in how they design both ingame and competitive experience.
The ingame experience is just meant to be free and simple. Always remember, on top of the fact that the games nowadays have extreme freedom in pokemon availability and the amount of ways you can play, there's always the fact that these games *need* to be able to be cleared by kids who literally never played a videogame before and whose only experience with pokemon was watching Ash (or whatever the new protag's name is) tell their starter to do the funny thing.
And they sorta succeed in this, the games are indeed really easy and you can honestly play them however. The only remotely difficult thing they've done in the last few years has been the Indigo Disk, which actually require you to put together a doubles team and puts you against opponents that have a degree of strategy... albeith, you still just have the option to overlevel and overpower them anyway.
The reason it *looks* like they have no clue is that there's expectation of difficulty levels. That veterans would "get a difficulty option to challenge them". That isn't in the design scope. Veterans will buy the games anyway for competitive reasons, so they never needed to invest their (already limited) resources into difficulty options. The game just has to be fun for kids, everything else is not important, by now they've basically even given up on giving veterans a bone as there's no postgame and no facilities.
And that is where Pokemon Champions comes in. Again, they do have a clear pattern in what they design VGC around.
They want it to be flashy. To have swing moments. Unfortunately, that doesn't lead to the... most competitive game ever, but it does lead to exciting games where you haven't won until you've won as a "crit" or "miss" or "unfortunate status" can always turn the table.
They even shown they may have realized that the RNG had got too bad last generation, with all the status nerfs that Champions had, due to the powercreep having caused even a single sleep turn to pretty much end the game in some scenario. (And Amoongus is suspiciously still absent from the Champions roster despite a lot of other powerhouses like Incineroar being present).
I wouldn't be surprised if the next time they do an actual balance change to mechanics, it may be to Rock Slide. The complaints about it have got really vocal, and I myself have complained multiple times of the fact that way too often the optimal play is "click non stab rock slide and hope for a flinch".
TLDR:
- They are totally not going blindly, they have a clear idea of what they want.
- For games, the issue is that what they want is not what the veteran players expect from a AAA price game, but is what attracts the children which (again) is the main buyer base.
- For competitive, they want it to be flashy, and they've shown to aknowledge they've gone too far with the flashyness and RNG and seem to be taking steps to address it.
The ingame experience is just meant to be free and simple. Always remember, on top of the fact that the games nowadays have extreme freedom in pokemon availability and the amount of ways you can play, there's always the fact that these games *need* to be able to be cleared by kids who literally never played a videogame before and whose only experience with pokemon was watching Ash (or whatever the new protag's name is) tell their starter to do the funny thing.
And they sorta succeed in this, the games are indeed really easy and you can honestly play them however. The only remotely difficult thing they've done in the last few years has been the Indigo Disk, which actually require you to put together a doubles team and puts you against opponents that have a degree of strategy... albeith, you still just have the option to overlevel and overpower them anyway.
The reason it *looks* like they have no clue is that there's expectation of difficulty levels. That veterans would "get a difficulty option to challenge them". That isn't in the design scope. Veterans will buy the games anyway for competitive reasons, so they never needed to invest their (already limited) resources into difficulty options. The game just has to be fun for kids, everything else is not important, by now they've basically even given up on giving veterans a bone as there's no postgame and no facilities.
And that is where Pokemon Champions comes in. Again, they do have a clear pattern in what they design VGC around.
They want it to be flashy. To have swing moments. Unfortunately, that doesn't lead to the... most competitive game ever, but it does lead to exciting games where you haven't won until you've won as a "crit" or "miss" or "unfortunate status" can always turn the table.
They even shown they may have realized that the RNG had got too bad last generation, with all the status nerfs that Champions had, due to the powercreep having caused even a single sleep turn to pretty much end the game in some scenario. (And Amoongus is suspiciously still absent from the Champions roster despite a lot of other powerhouses like Incineroar being present).
I wouldn't be surprised if the next time they do an actual balance change to mechanics, it may be to Rock Slide. The complaints about it have got really vocal, and I myself have complained multiple times of the fact that way too often the optimal play is "click non stab rock slide and hope for a flinch".
TLDR:
- They are totally not going blindly, they have a clear idea of what they want.
- For games, the issue is that what they want is not what the veteran players expect from a AAA price game, but is what attracts the children which (again) is the main buyer base.
- For competitive, they want it to be flashy, and they've shown to aknowledge they've gone too far with the flashyness and RNG and seem to be taking steps to address it.
None of them. Movesets until Gen 3 were, as you pointed out, garbage, Gen 4 pingponged between you get nothing and you get everything, Gen 5 leaned much heavier on the latter but still has shit like Unfeazant, Excadrill getting no Steel moves and also Earthquake 20 levels before Drill Run, Scolipede's strongest non-relearner STAB moves being 65 base power and the like - though I do think Gen 5 is probably closest to what I want movesets to be, not perfect but closest - and every generation since has just continued Gen 5's hard lean to getting everything you want, way earlier than you need it.
Gyarados stands out as a big example of a mon that really isn't designed for the modern games' good movepools and easy backline experience. Having endgame stats at level 20 (which is no longer particularly hard to achieve) means it's still quite competent when relying on Tackle and Bite. Learning Waterfall before level 30 is complete overkill.
They would never do this but honestly Gyarados’ evolution level should be retconned to 35-40 in the mandatory Exp. All era. Getting a Magikarp to level 20 is trivial now and like you say, Gyarados is just ridiculous power level wise at that level.
You're kind of unintentionally underselling this lol. SV Gyarados learns Waterfall at level 21. It also has access to Ice Fang immediately upon evolution through move relearning and gets Crunch at 24. It's basically set up for the whole game from the word go bar Dragon Dance.
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