Technically fails in Gen 1 due to special being one stat and thus making Mewtwo 590 BST
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"Patterns" in Pokémon generations
- Thread starter Codraroll
- Start date
Broken pattern:
"Every generation will have Pokemon Trainer Red appear in a mainline game."
Gen 1: Playable
Gen 2: Battle
Gen 3: Remakes
Gen 4: Remakes(Battle)
Gen 5: PWT
Gen 6: broken
Gen 7: Battle Tree/Let's Go Battle
Gen 8: broken
Gen 9: ???
Broken in Generation 6 which is actually kind of surprising considering that XY was such a nostalgic game. Generation 8 makes more sense considering it focuses so much on new things. Generation 7 was the 20th anniversary generation, so it being the only generation past 5 to feature Red makes some sense to me, I don't expect Red to appear in Generation 9. If Generation 9 does not feature Red, it will have been around 7 years since Red's last appearance in a mainline game, with the last largest gap being 5 years and 8 months.
Bonus: If you want to track the gap,we are currently 4 years and 10 months past LGPE. That means we have 11 months before we have hit the longest drought of Trainer Red content in a mainline Pokemon game.
"Every generation will have Pokemon Trainer Red appear in a mainline game."
Gen 1: Playable
Gen 2: Battle
Gen 3: Remakes
Gen 4: Remakes(Battle)
Gen 5: PWT
Gen 6: broken
Gen 7: Battle Tree/Let's Go Battle
Gen 8: broken
Gen 9: ???
Broken in Generation 6 which is actually kind of surprising considering that XY was such a nostalgic game. Generation 8 makes more sense considering it focuses so much on new things. Generation 7 was the 20th anniversary generation, so it being the only generation past 5 to feature Red makes some sense to me, I don't expect Red to appear in Generation 9. If Generation 9 does not feature Red, it will have been around 7 years since Red's last appearance in a mainline game, with the last largest gap being 5 years and 8 months.
Bonus: If you want to track the gap,we are currently 4 years and 10 months past LGPE. That means we have 11 months before we have hit the longest drought of Trainer Red content in a mainline Pokemon game.
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Every even-numbered generation has a Ice-type gym leader.
I mean you're not wrong, but Gen 5 has Brycen in BW. It's not really a pattern if it's not only the even gens.
I wanted to say this but was afraid of sounding mean. It's actually even less interesting than 'even gens + Gen 5', because Gen 9 also has an Ice-type Gym Leader and Gen 7 doesn't even have Gym Leaders to begin with, so it's more like "every generation with Gyms has an Ice-type Leader except 1 and 3".
Here's a long and slightly rambling post about the secondary typings of fully evolved starters. I figured it fits here because it's all about patterns or "rules", which I expect to be broken before long.
So, you may have noticed in recent generations that, despite there being 14 available types that aren't Fire, Water, or Grass, only five of them have been assigned as secondary starter typings since Gen IV: Fighting, Dark, Ghost, Psychic, and Fairy. Of these, Psychic and Fairy have only been seen once each, while the others have appeared multiple times (Fighting and Dark four times in generations V-IX, counting Hisui, Ghost thrice). What gives? Where are all the other types?
I think it has everything to do with ideas of balance. A quirk of the type chart is that very few types work to set up balanced "triangles" to work with Fire, Water, and Grass. To be specific, I think the designers are working based on four ideas:
Right away, we can see that some types don't fit into the starter triangle no matter where we insert them. Dragon resists all three types and would immediately break rule 1. Normal has no favourable offensive or defensive matchups, and so would break rule 2. Rock would create a 4x weakness if paired with Fire or Water, and break rule 1 if paired with Grass. Ground, on the other hand ...
OK, hold on, one thing must be established before we move on to list all the types. Things get a lot easier if we just list the types that have no type chart interactions with Fire, Water, or Grass at all. Aside from the already-discarded Normal, those types are: Fighting, Dark, Ghost, and Psychic. Does the list seem familiar? That ought to put a few pieces together to explain starter typings in recent generations.
There's also Fairy, which is just resisted by Fire, a quite minimal interaction, so it can go into the starter triangle quite easily. Hence Primarina.
However, there are even more intricacies to consider. The five eligible typings of Fighting, Dark, Ghost, Psychic, and Fairy have multiple interactions between each other. If the rule of balance is to be maintained, some of these combinations must be avoided. But herein lies a bit of a challenge: We're running out of good type triangles that don't ruin the relative balance between the three starters. Five eligible types, pick three. Mathematically, there are only 10 possible combinations to be had, and half of them are quite poorly balanced:
Note that Fairy and Psychic are difficult to balance. Psychic because it has only one favourable offensive matchup, Fairy because it has no unfavourable ones. Hence why they haven't been used as much as the other three.
And of course, limiting the starter trio to Dark/Fighting/Ghost will exhaust the possibilities of unique starter types quite quickly and start racking up multiple repetitions in short order. The only combination that hasn't been used since Gen V is Water/Ghost, which would have then run up against Fire/Fighting (and we're all tired of that) or Fire/Dark (Incineroar again ...), and Grass/Dark (so soon after Meowscarada) or Grass/Fighting (used twice in the past three generations). Likewise, the balanced combinations that involve Fairy and/or Psychic also cause recently used type combinations to be repeated.
Of course, you could just ditch the secondary typings altogether and just rely on the perfect interactions between Fire, Water, and Grass, but that was also done quite recently. And in Gen II. And mostly in Gen V. Besides, it's a bit boring, so I wouldn't consider it a good idea to repeat again.
So in conclusion, I think the TL;DR is:
So, you may have noticed in recent generations that, despite there being 14 available types that aren't Fire, Water, or Grass, only five of them have been assigned as secondary starter typings since Gen IV: Fighting, Dark, Ghost, Psychic, and Fairy. Of these, Psychic and Fairy have only been seen once each, while the others have appeared multiple times (Fighting and Dark four times in generations V-IX, counting Hisui, Ghost thrice). What gives? Where are all the other types?
I think it has everything to do with ideas of balance. A quirk of the type chart is that very few types work to set up balanced "triangles" to work with Fire, Water, and Grass. To be specific, I think the designers are working based on four ideas:
- The Fire-Water-Grass triangle must be maintained: Fire must always be super-effective against the Grass starter, and not very effective against the Water starter, and likewise for the other two types.
- The secondary typings should interact with each other, either offensively or defensively, but not create overly lopsided matchups.
- No 4X weaknesses or resistances between the starter types (for instance, Grass/Fighting is 4X weak against Flying, but that's fine as long as there are no Flying-types in the starter triangle).
- Either all starters get secondary typings, or none do.
Right away, we can see that some types don't fit into the starter triangle no matter where we insert them. Dragon resists all three types and would immediately break rule 1. Normal has no favourable offensive or defensive matchups, and so would break rule 2. Rock would create a 4x weakness if paired with Fire or Water, and break rule 1 if paired with Grass. Ground, on the other hand ...
OK, hold on, one thing must be established before we move on to list all the types. Things get a lot easier if we just list the types that have no type chart interactions with Fire, Water, or Grass at all. Aside from the already-discarded Normal, those types are: Fighting, Dark, Ghost, and Psychic. Does the list seem familiar? That ought to put a few pieces together to explain starter typings in recent generations.
There's also Fairy, which is just resisted by Fire, a quite minimal interaction, so it can go into the starter triangle quite easily. Hence Primarina.
However, there are even more intricacies to consider. The five eligible typings of Fighting, Dark, Ghost, Psychic, and Fairy have multiple interactions between each other. If the rule of balance is to be maintained, some of these combinations must be avoided. But herein lies a bit of a challenge: We're running out of good type triangles that don't ruin the relative balance between the three starters. Five eligible types, pick three. Mathematically, there are only 10 possible combinations to be had, and half of them are quite poorly balanced:
- Dark/Fairy/Fighting - Unbalanced. Dark weak against both others, Fairy strong against both others.
- Dark/Fairy/Ghost - Reasonably balanced, used in Gen VII. Dark beats Ghost, the others are neutral.
- Dark/Fairy/Psychic - Slightly unbalanced, not yet used. Dark beats Psychic, Fairy beats Dark, Psychic beats none.
- Dark/Fighting/Ghost - Well-balanced, used in Hisui and Gen IX.
- Dark/Fighting/Psychic - Well-balanced, used in Gen VI.
- Dark/Ghost/Psychic - Unbalanced. Psychic weak against both others, Dark strong against both others.
- Fairy/Fighting/Ghost - Unbalanced. Fighting weak against both others.
- Fairy/Fighting/Psychic - Unbalanced. Fighting weak against both others.
- Fairy/Ghost/Psychic - Slightly unbalanced, not yet used. Ghost beats Psychic, the others are neutral.
- Fighting/Ghost/Psychic - Unbalanced. Fighting weak against both others, Ghost strong against both others.
Note that Fairy and Psychic are difficult to balance. Psychic because it has only one favourable offensive matchup, Fairy because it has no unfavourable ones. Hence why they haven't been used as much as the other three.
And of course, limiting the starter trio to Dark/Fighting/Ghost will exhaust the possibilities of unique starter types quite quickly and start racking up multiple repetitions in short order. The only combination that hasn't been used since Gen V is Water/Ghost, which would have then run up against Fire/Fighting (and we're all tired of that) or Fire/Dark (Incineroar again ...), and Grass/Dark (so soon after Meowscarada) or Grass/Fighting (used twice in the past three generations). Likewise, the balanced combinations that involve Fairy and/or Psychic also cause recently used type combinations to be repeated.
Of course, you could just ditch the secondary typings altogether and just rely on the perfect interactions between Fire, Water, and Grass, but that was also done quite recently. And in Gen II. And mostly in Gen V. Besides, it's a bit boring, so I wouldn't consider it a good idea to repeat again.
So in conclusion, I think the TL;DR is:
- Too few types have interactions that work nicely with a Fire, Water, and Grass starter triangle - only five, to be exact.
- Many combination of these types are too unbalanced to work well.
- The combinations that are balanced and work well have already been used.
- Things will become really repetitive if they continue to use them.
(I still say a trio of starters that all turn into Type/Dragon for the third evo would be baller as hell).
Yeah, they're really trying to limit the type interactions(likely after complaints about Gen IV and Torterra/Infernape/Empoleon being imbalanced), but they've gone too far in the other direction IMO. There's plenty of type combos they could do something with(Water/Steel, Grass/Ground, Fire/Electric is my personal idea). Would it be perfectly balanced? Nope. But it'd be interesting and liven things up a bit, and I'm down for that.
I think you have a good point, but I think there's some differences:
- I think Normal and Dragon are banned types. Starters are meant to feel special, so normal type probably goes out the window. "Oh but eevee-" eevee wasn't created as a starter and also it had years of pandering and special treatment before it was even considered a starter, and not even in the original mainline games.
Dragon I think as a concept and lore is fine, it's no more special than fairy, ghost etc, but I think its less about breaking the starter balance but more so breaking the games balance. While yes, you can catch and use dragons more easily in your main run, starters are often designed to be way above the "average" fully evolved mon since they're your partner for the entire game, while the dragons you catch are mild and not anything special or are locked to endgame. A dragon starter would probably cheapen a lot of the mid/late game OR be designed in a way that its nerfed and less fun to play vs the other starters.
- I don't think there's other banned types, and balance isn't done on specific type interactions but rather how it feels. It's ok that dirge can't hit quaq super effective with shadowball, because being immune to fighting already feels good and comparable to the other interactions. One sided extra interactions are also fine when they dont feel that meaningful. Sure incineroar can get super effective dark type on decidueye, but it was already going to destroy it with any fire move, and its fine that its not weak to fairy because it gets blasted by any water move primarina pulls on it.
- I think a lot of the usage of fairy, dark, ghost, fighting etc is that they both fit the more humanoid concepts that starters have been taking, not just in their pose but also inspirations and connection to human jobs and hobbies and creations. And ALSO because they feel like cool typings! and starters work sooo much on power of cool in this series.
- I think Normal and Dragon are banned types. Starters are meant to feel special, so normal type probably goes out the window. "Oh but eevee-" eevee wasn't created as a starter and also it had years of pandering and special treatment before it was even considered a starter, and not even in the original mainline games.
Dragon I think as a concept and lore is fine, it's no more special than fairy, ghost etc, but I think its less about breaking the starter balance but more so breaking the games balance. While yes, you can catch and use dragons more easily in your main run, starters are often designed to be way above the "average" fully evolved mon since they're your partner for the entire game, while the dragons you catch are mild and not anything special or are locked to endgame. A dragon starter would probably cheapen a lot of the mid/late game OR be designed in a way that its nerfed and less fun to play vs the other starters.
- I don't think there's other banned types, and balance isn't done on specific type interactions but rather how it feels. It's ok that dirge can't hit quaq super effective with shadowball, because being immune to fighting already feels good and comparable to the other interactions. One sided extra interactions are also fine when they dont feel that meaningful. Sure incineroar can get super effective dark type on decidueye, but it was already going to destroy it with any fire move, and its fine that its not weak to fairy because it gets blasted by any water move primarina pulls on it.
- I think a lot of the usage of fairy, dark, ghost, fighting etc is that they both fit the more humanoid concepts that starters have been taking, not just in their pose but also inspirations and connection to human jobs and hobbies and creations. And ALSO because they feel like cool typings! and starters work sooo much on power of cool in this series.
They could always go back and give a secondary typing without considerations about keeping a secondary super-effective triangle like a Grass/ Electric, Water/ Psychic and Fire/ Poison would work fine and they probably will to avoid being repetitive. You are all forgeting that there are two Dragon starters already (Mega Sceptile and Mega Charizard X), only Electric, Normal, Bug, Ice and Rock have never been a secondary typing on starters.
Normal not being used probably has more to do with it being a "boring" type. I can't imagine they'd expect people to be enthusiastic about selecting a starter that becomes Normal, whereas people will be interested and excited by a starter which eventually becomes Ghost or Psychic or Steel.
Normal/Fighting/Ghost could almost work as a secondary type trio though - it's almost equal, except for Normal and Ghost being mutually ineffective against each other (unless the starter with the Ghost typing got Scrappy as a HA or something?)
Normal/Fighting/Ghost could almost work as a secondary type trio though - it's almost equal, except for Normal and Ghost being mutually ineffective against each other (unless the starter with the Ghost typing got Scrappy as a HA or something?)
sure, but theyre both optional and require use of your mega slot, and megas in general break both games pretty hard, especially bc they both give you two freebie insane mega mons in latis and lucario
No one’s forgetting about those, it’s just that temporary, deliberately overpowered, and now effectively discontinued (and thus irrelevant) Mega Evolutions are clearly not what people are talking about when discussing the possibility of a Dragon-type Starter. Charizard and Sceptile can only sometimes be Dragon-type, and only in a couple of games in the series. By that logic, you might as well count every Starter as a Dragon-type since they can all Terastallize into one in Scarlet & Violet.
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For sure, special mechanics like Megas are the only way that Dragon will be used as a secondary typing or maybe some gen where we get Fire/ Dragon, Water/ Dragon and Grass/Dragon. Ice too will take a long time if ever to be used because the most logical typing for it (Water/ Ice) would screw over the grass starter.
My point is that TPC is willing to buck trends, give special treats and unbalance the starter triangle if it would result in a cool thing
and they only need Megas or similar mechanics to do it which are pretty much still relevant. Your Tera example just reinforce my point, thank you.Some types only feel like they're 'off-limits' alongside one or two of the primary starter types, or for the NFE stages of a starter line specifically. For example, Grass/Electric and Water/Electric both seem reasonable to me, even for the starter's basic stage, but Fire/Electric feels like a no-go unless it's the final evolution. However, some types feel wrong on a final form for other reasons, meaning that specific types end up feeling 'locked out' when you dig down to the specifics, even if they seem like plausible options at first glance. [insert obligatory disclaimer that patterns and trends can be broken at any time]
Bug is a good example: conceptually, it doesn't make much sense for a Pokemon to gain the Bug type through evolution (and indeed, no Pokemon has done so in the franchise's history), but having a starter's basic form be Bug-type clashes with the Bug-types that appear in the early routes of almost every main series game. Plus, Grass/Bug and Water/Bug seem like very dicey typings to give to a starter's unevolved form (the former is devastatingly weak to a bunch of common early-game attacks and the latter immediately upends the Grass matchup).
This tension also makes Ice a harder sell. Ice is both a very exotic type to give to the base form of a starter and a type that's tricky to sell as the logical endpoint for a pure Grass- or Fire-type Pokemon. Water/Ice seems plausible to me (sidenote: I always think of Water/Ice as one of the more prominent combos throughout the series, but Iron Bundle and Arctovish are the only Water/Ice mons introduced in the last six generations), but it'd have to be exclusive to the final evolution if you wanted to preserve the basic type triangle early on. Starter Pokemon also tend not to be designed around a specific terrain or biome, which is a common trait of Ice-types.
Bug is a good example: conceptually, it doesn't make much sense for a Pokemon to gain the Bug type through evolution (and indeed, no Pokemon has done so in the franchise's history), but having a starter's basic form be Bug-type clashes with the Bug-types that appear in the early routes of almost every main series game. Plus, Grass/Bug and Water/Bug seem like very dicey typings to give to a starter's unevolved form (the former is devastatingly weak to a bunch of common early-game attacks and the latter immediately upends the Grass matchup).
This tension also makes Ice a harder sell. Ice is both a very exotic type to give to the base form of a starter and a type that's tricky to sell as the logical endpoint for a pure Grass- or Fire-type Pokemon. Water/Ice seems plausible to me (sidenote: I always think of Water/Ice as one of the more prominent combos throughout the series, but Iron Bundle and Arctovish are the only Water/Ice mons introduced in the last six generations), but it'd have to be exclusive to the final evolution if you wanted to preserve the basic type triangle early on. Starter Pokemon also tend not to be designed around a specific terrain or biome, which is a common trait of Ice-types.
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Idk, before Primarina existed I remember thinking that a dolphin water starter could conceivably be either Water/Ice without being overly cold-themed. With very minor tweaks Samurott and Empoleon could both be Water/Ice.
But yes I agree some types feel off-limits: Electric is something of a special case (since it's Pikachu's type and/or the resident Pikaclone) so it feels unlikely even though I'd love to see it, Bug is out for the reasons you mentioned, and while Dragon has been made more commonplace it's still a bit too good. One starter getting Dragon as a (non-Mega) typing would feel too overwhelming so you'd need to give it to all three to compensate (which I do think could work and I'd like to see tried).
A lot of people cite Sinnoh as an attempt to make the starters truly balance each other, and though it doesn't quite work (Empoleon is weak to Torterra and Infernape) it's been done better in recent gens, most notably with Kalos and Alola.
If you're going for the balancing approach I don't even think the secondary typings need to form a duo of their own - and this gives you much more creative freedom; off the top of my head you could go with Fire+Electric to counter Water, Grass+Rock to counter Fire, and Water+Poison to counter Grass). The other way to go is that you don't bother attempting to balance them and simply increase each starter's existing advantage by adding a second type that's advantageous against the mon they already beat (using the three I already named, you can do Fire+Poison to really hammer Grass, Grass+Electric to punish Water, and Water+Rock to hit Fire doubly hard).
I disagree that these are consistent ideas though. They're broken too often to reasonably claim that they're consistent (as you note) and while they've been followed fairly consistently for the past few gens I question whether that's a new design ethic that's been adopted or just a product of circumstance. Starters have followed a lot of other design changes since Gen VI (they're much more humanoid than they were, with much more ingrained characteristics) and I think the additional typings is as much to do with marketing and game mechancis - for one thing, the generally smaller numbers of new Pokemon means that it's harder to get away with single-typed species.
I wish I knew why they used Fire/Fighting three generations running. Like I would genuinely pay to see those decisions taken ("do you think people might be getting bored with that?" "Who cares, do it anyway!")
But I actually think starter's secondary types since Gen VI have gotten a little stale. Counting Hisui, we've had Fighting/Dark/Psychic, Ghost/Dark/Fairy, Fighting/Ghost/Dark, Dark/Ghost/Fighting. So that's Dark four times and Fighting three, and both have now been paired with Grass, Fire, and Water.
No more Fighting or Dark starters pls Game Freak. Shake things up and give us one that's part Rock or even Flying or Poison or Steel again. PLEASE.
Honestly the biome comment was more about if they try to do the old 'make it bipedal and give it a job' tactic for a Grass or Fire starter, because making an Ice-themed humanoid Pokemon in that mould would likely involve specific nods to cold climate/gear/whatever, which would then feel strange outside the appropriate environment. Overall I agree that
for a starter.
Absolutely. Rock is crying out for some starter rep!
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Tbf Water/Rock and Fire/Rock have both been done a lot and they both, uh... kinda suck as typings but Grass/Rock has only been done once with Cradily (and Ogerpon, partially). I think there's a lot of room for an offensively-inclined special-leaning Grass/Rock type, which would suit a starter well.
Equally, while I'd love to see a Fire/Electric type not named Rotom, a Grass/Electric starter could also potentially slap if it was very defensive. Like imagine Meganium but with a slightly better movepool and a secondary Electric typing. Hoo-boy, I'd be all over that.
EDIT: Considering the conversation going on concurrently in this thread, this is actually where I'd advocate for starter trios where not every member is dual-typed, because it's another way to potentially make a "balanced" trio. Taking this into consideration:
...you could have a setup like Fire/Ground, Water/Poison, and Grass for the latter where it's relatively balanced (ish... Grass becomes neutral against Water in this setup). Or, alternatively, going back to my point about increasing the type advantages...
...you could go with Fire/Poison, Water/Ground, and Grass, which makes all members of the trio absolutely crush the member they already have an advantage against. (I'm not feeling these combinations specifically though, Water/Ground's been done to death and I'm yet to see a Fire/Poison concept I like more than Salazzle).
Equally, while I'd love to see a Fire/Electric type not named Rotom, a Grass/Electric starter could also potentially slap if it was very defensive. Like imagine Meganium but with a slightly better movepool and a secondary Electric typing. Hoo-boy, I'd be all over that.
EDIT: Considering the conversation going on concurrently in this thread, this is actually where I'd advocate for starter trios where not every member is dual-typed, because it's another way to potentially make a "balanced" trio. Taking this into consideration:
...you could have a setup like Fire/Ground, Water/Poison, and Grass for the latter where it's relatively balanced (ish... Grass becomes neutral against Water in this setup). Or, alternatively, going back to my point about increasing the type advantages...
...you could go with Fire/Poison, Water/Ground, and Grass, which makes all members of the trio absolutely crush the member they already have an advantage against. (I'm not feeling these combinations specifically though, Water/Ground's been done to death and I'm yet to see a Fire/Poison concept I like more than Salazzle).
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I don't think you can attribute the use of Dark/Fighting/Ghost/Fairy/Psychic to the shift toward becoming more humanoid at all. I remember in the pre-release of SwSh when we saw Grookey, Sobble and Scorbunny for the first time all the speculation about their possible types. People tended to think Scorbunny would be Ground- or Electric-Type, as these were fitting for its occupation as a footballer (and its reveal trailer showed its feet making sparks on the ground). Lots of people thought they'd make Grookey Rock-Type to lean into the drumming angle, otherwise they thought Normal-Type as Normal-Type is the de facto Sound-Type. Sobble people did tend to think Ghost-Type because it vanished, but others considered Poison-Type due to moves like Acid Armour. Of course, all of these starters remained mono-type in reality, but it goes to show how all these other types can be used to emphasise the anthropomorphised traits that starters may have.
And it's not like the typings that have been given to starters are the only options they could have had. Sure, Meowscarada being a Dark-Type because it's a magician is fine... but the ability Magician is largely associated with Psychic-Type (Delphox and Hoopa) or Fairy-Type with Klefki. No Dark-Type gets that ability, and I'd argue Normal-Type (since it's a street magician and not actually magic) or Steel-Type (paper is associated with Steel-Type given Kartana, would require minor design change) would probably work better. Skeledirge being Ghost-Type is fine, but bones are a solidly Ground-Type trait in Pokémon, owing to Bone Club / Bone Rush / Bonemerang and the Cubone family. Decidueye could certainly have stayed Flying-Type. Primarina's Fairy-Type is a somewhat uneasy middleground of a lot of potential concepts; there are potential mythological inspirations with sirens or selkies, and probable arts inspirations with opera, but really the middleground of this is again Normal-Type. Liquid Voice obsoletes Normal-Type, but why Fairy-Type? Is it really just because it's girly and has vague mythological inspo? This is one that should probably be mono-type lol.
All this is to say that I think attributing the secondary typings to the shift toward personality and anthropomorphisation is misguided, since it's hardly these few types that can work for that concept. Sure, some are probably easier to make work than others, we've never had a Pokémon gain the Bug-Type on evolution before, but I don't think any should be off-limits, and the only one that probably is right now is Dragon-Type but I'd argue even that could easily be broken at any given moment. And for what it's worth, I disagree with the idea that Dragon-Type is banned because of the type chart, because e.g. Grass/Dragon, Water/Rock, and Fire/Ice is a fun starter trio concept (that I just thought up) where every Pokémon becomes quad weak to the starter it starts out weak to. Gaining the Dragon-Type isn't unbalanced here at all (particularly assuming Fire/Ice doesn't get Freeze-Dry which is easy just, don't give it to it).
The starters having balanced type interactions is definitely something they consider, but they have also over-limited themselves with its potential so far, and I don't think the reason for that is starters becoming humanoid, it's just that they came up with design concepts they liked that were specifically related to the types in question repeatedly. E.G. once you already have Decidueye or Skeledirge as Ghost-Type starters, suddenly you then have to try and make the rest of the starters' types synergise.
And it's not like the typings that have been given to starters are the only options they could have had. Sure, Meowscarada being a Dark-Type because it's a magician is fine... but the ability Magician is largely associated with Psychic-Type (Delphox and Hoopa) or Fairy-Type with Klefki. No Dark-Type gets that ability, and I'd argue Normal-Type (since it's a street magician and not actually magic) or Steel-Type (paper is associated with Steel-Type given Kartana, would require minor design change) would probably work better. Skeledirge being Ghost-Type is fine, but bones are a solidly Ground-Type trait in Pokémon, owing to Bone Club / Bone Rush / Bonemerang and the Cubone family. Decidueye could certainly have stayed Flying-Type. Primarina's Fairy-Type is a somewhat uneasy middleground of a lot of potential concepts; there are potential mythological inspirations with sirens or selkies, and probable arts inspirations with opera, but really the middleground of this is again Normal-Type. Liquid Voice obsoletes Normal-Type, but why Fairy-Type? Is it really just because it's girly and has vague mythological inspo? This is one that should probably be mono-type lol.
All this is to say that I think attributing the secondary typings to the shift toward personality and anthropomorphisation is misguided, since it's hardly these few types that can work for that concept. Sure, some are probably easier to make work than others, we've never had a Pokémon gain the Bug-Type on evolution before, but I don't think any should be off-limits, and the only one that probably is right now is Dragon-Type but I'd argue even that could easily be broken at any given moment. And for what it's worth, I disagree with the idea that Dragon-Type is banned because of the type chart, because e.g. Grass/Dragon, Water/Rock, and Fire/Ice is a fun starter trio concept (that I just thought up) where every Pokémon becomes quad weak to the starter it starts out weak to. Gaining the Dragon-Type isn't unbalanced here at all (particularly assuming Fire/Ice doesn't get Freeze-Dry which is easy just, don't give it to it).
The starters having balanced type interactions is definitely something they consider, but they have also over-limited themselves with its potential so far, and I don't think the reason for that is starters becoming humanoid, it's just that they came up with design concepts they liked that were specifically related to the types in question repeatedly. E.G. once you already have Decidueye or Skeledirge as Ghost-Type starters, suddenly you then have to try and make the rest of the starters' types synergise.
Inspired by the previous page's talk about a Dragon-type Eeveelution, Generation VI is the first one not to introduce a move of every currently existing Type.
The Gen VI games introduced moves of every Type, except Dragon.
As for the ongoing Starter Type discussion...
The Gen VI games introduced moves of every Type, except Dragon.
As for the ongoing Starter Type discussion...
The issue with some Types is that you had to rebalance the early encounters so one Starter won't have a severe advantage or disadvantage compared to the others. plz ignore Chikorita This is why there are currently no first-stage Ghost- or Steel- or even Rock-type Pokémon: because of their defensive advantage against the Normal type, which is designed to be the most basic Type and therefore the one you encounter all the time in the early game: It's one of the most common Types among all 1,000+ species, 1/5th of all moves as of Generation IX are Normal-type, including more Physical moves than any Type (among these some of the most basic early-game moves), not to mention the archetype of the early-game land animal.
I'm not convinced here since the early game also feels heavier on Bug and/or Grass types, which plainly favours the Fire starter. Hoenn, by frontloading its single forest, basically allows Mudkip and its evolutions to stomp everything starting in Rustboro. As for early normal resists, I know off the top of my head that Magnemite is obtainable very early in Alola.
As an aside, I'm not even sure Normal should still be the baseline now that starters have a STAB move out of the gate.
Honestly it’d be hilarious if all the starters got a second typing that was super-effective against the starter each one was normally weak to; something like Grass/Ground, Fire/Electric, and Water/Ice. Granted, they all ought to start out mono-type so as to not throw players straight into the chaos.