this is an unpopular opinion only in niche spaces like this but honestly im tired of people replying with any attempt at talking about more interesting fights with this belief that they can never be made interesting or harder Ever. What is this insane pessimism?? you dont have to do much to make an engaging fight that exercises puzzle solving, and we dont need souls like difficulty for it either. You guys sound like the Nothing Ever Happens meme
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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
idk if this is critique *of* my post but I agree with this either way
no its just been a common reply here to any topics about gym leaders and their proxies and how their design can be approached lol. I think theres this overcorrection from people making too many smogon-y/vgc sets and concepts, because you dont need to do that to engage with the mechanics of the game at all. Rain teams dont have to be pelipper archaludon maxxing etc
Well, I do agree with monotype teams with Gym Leaders can end up counterproductive as it encourage streamrolling strategies. That is why most casual players and competitive players avoid weaknesses overlap to avoid such a thing from happening.
Problem is, type-specialist Gym Leaders are just far too ingrained with Pokémon’s legacy that revamping them to be more vaguely similar to a Pokémon Type (i.e. Sun team, Burn or similar mechanics for Fire) might be controversial for those nostalgic with the Gym Leaders. Not helping that some specialists end up having too many monotyped Pokémon leaving them even more vulnerable to streamrolling, especially without good coverage.
But giving them a characteristic strategy that pertains the type, making proper use of wall Pokémon, make decently competant movepools at the time, don’t leave Pokémon unevolved at the time it would make sense to evolve them, more Double Battles if we’re being generous now that VGC is more popular than ever, and they are able to stand out from each others even more even if we can end up find a way to streamroll them.
Problem is, type-specialist Gym Leaders are just far too ingrained with Pokémon’s legacy that revamping them to be more vaguely similar to a Pokémon Type (i.e. Sun team, Burn or similar mechanics for Fire) might be controversial for those nostalgic with the Gym Leaders. Not helping that some specialists end up having too many monotyped Pokémon leaving them even more vulnerable to streamrolling, especially without good coverage.
But giving them a characteristic strategy that pertains the type, making proper use of wall Pokémon, make decently competant movepools at the time, don’t leave Pokémon unevolved at the time it would make sense to evolve them, more Double Battles if we’re being generous now that VGC is more popular than ever, and they are able to stand out from each others even more even if we can end up find a way to streamroll them.
Your first blunder was assuming the average Persona 5 fan is a Persona 5 player.
Jokes aside, I feel like this is a level of reductive you can ultimately turn any RPG into if you really flatten the perspective. The issue I have with Pokemon compared to the loop you describe in other RPGs is that Pokemon has nothing to really keep track of when playing 95/100 Main Game battles.
Ultimately the Debuff maintenance and healing at least requires assessing what the enemy is doing turn-to-turn, "do I survive this next hit? Are their buffs still up? Do I have to cure something?" Pokemon's rank and file battles have enemies that use some strategy to hit you harder, but it's incredibly rare that there's anything to be aware of besides "I need Fire instead of Water and this big guy takes 4 repeat clicks instead of 2 to KO." There's very little that will punish you if you aren't monitoring your turn-to-turn status or thinking any further ahead than what you are doing this round (in other RPGs this could be things like buffing and healing before a big attack, to reduce your heal time after and thus leave more room to throw damage-increasing Utility, for example, and make progress faster).
Other RPGs will also have bosses with much more longevity than your individual party members to encourage buffs and debuffs to even the odds, but Pokemon's generally-symmetrical battle system means your Pokemon can very easily out-raw-number the opponent's and they will rarely be given advantages to make them an obstacle instead of a mirror with worse thinking/static planning. The closest we have to a solution to this is Raid Battles and specific-boss-encounters like the Totems in Gen 7, enemies that are objectively advantaged (between boosts and stuff like Shields or Helper Pokemon) over a reasonably-leveled player to encourage tactical play of some degree if you don't want to outgrind them far harder than an opposing trainer needs.
Pretty much what I had in mind, but it is a lot to explain lol
Agreed, and besides that, let's be real here, there are a lot of ways to mitigate weaknesses or just plain catch people lacking.
Fire teams can set up Sun to immediately neutralize their weakness to Water-types, and Burn to handle their physical-oriented weaknesses like Ground and Rock.
Brought a Grass-type to the Water Gym? Enjoy this nice Ice Beam.
We use coverage moves alllllllllll the time, it's definitely possible to make monotype teams work. Hell, there's even a competitive format on Smogon for it!
Honestly, that can be worked around by uhhhh, not doing things like XY did.
Diantha's Mega Gardevoir has 8 (eight) IVs across the board, no EVs at all, and it's Jolly.
At some point, they just gotta let bosses have some real stats.
And you’re right. Sand is there to mitigate Rock’s low SpD weakness such as Grass and Water, Snow to help with Ice’s physical oriented weaknesses such as Rock, Fighting and Steel, Bug have plenty of utility and deceptively strong moves like First Impression (which is even buffed to 100 base power in Champions!), Electric’s Paralysis to shut down player’s own fast Pokémon, the danger of PsySpam in Psychic terrain, etc.
That’s a way to make them memorable, encourage players to use more than “attack, attack, attack” if they don’t decide to overlevel, all while staying true to their monotype origins.
I generally don't consider totems to be significantly advantaged over the more symmetric trainer fights. Only having one mon is a big enough disadvantage that the rest of the stuff is playing catchup. Later iterations on the idea I would call advantaged, but gutting debuffs because they're a big weakness of single mons is counterproductive to getting more complex player strategies. I feel like the first step in addressing the lack of difficulty is to make it more symmetric by limiting the advantages the player gets over NPC trainers. There's not a lot that needs to be proactively played around when the player has access to a large number of healing and buffing items and a free switch when the opponent brings out their check. Sure, limitations on those are easy for a player to hourseule in, but it's also no longer the game itself providing an engaging challenge.
Retaining the title of the thread with an "unpopular opinion" of my own, my own addition to this ongoing topic is that monotype is also a decent teambuilding block to base teams on.
When you really think about it, trying to come up with a (thematically cohesive) team for any given individual (but especially bosses) is significantly trickier than it looks; especially without overlapping some types, especially since said types also often represent many terms/elements at once.
Imagine having to come up with a team for a tech nerd/scientist; or hell, take Colress's team as an example. As a tech guy, he uses steel, electric and psychic type mons to represent science, genious and machinery. Thematically appropriate while sticking to a cohesive base, without having to remain monotype; it wouldn't make much sense for him to use types like fire, water or grass out of nowhere (unless said mons were also part - one of the previously-mentioned types.
We also have Steven Stone who uses all of rock, ground and steel to represent his love for discovering new minerals by digging around. Then there's Alder, who spends a lot of time in nature and thus owns many bug-type pokemon to reflect that (alongside a few other mons representing other similar things). And in general, champions often use type-diverse teams since they (supposedly) have a lot of experiences under their belt, thus they have a lot of different things to represent through many pokemon of different types (and also have more mons than most trainers).
Point being, monotype is often safer and simpler to build teams with; it's intuitive and gets to show off various aspects of a particular type with a wide variety of mons. ....Or at least that's the intent, and -especially in a pve setting- many such monotypes can't escape the click SE move(s) of each type to win issue; at best, they might have 1-2 thin lines of defense that may crumble, and then the rest of the team falls apart like dominoes. However...even in such cases, said leaders don't need to have teams that are strictly monotype; having a wildcard mon here and there to cover for their weaknesses can provide an interesting new sight while offering a newly challenging angle to the fight. Gen 1 bosses/gen 2 e4/DP bosses often tend to do this, with...varying levels of effectiveness (admittedly this is moreso due to a limited selection of mons in the dex rather than anything else). And I wish more bosses in later games/gens do this as well, to at least pretend they're trying with teambuilding choices.
When you really think about it, trying to come up with a (thematically cohesive) team for any given individual (but especially bosses) is significantly trickier than it looks; especially without overlapping some types, especially since said types also often represent many terms/elements at once.
Imagine having to come up with a team for a tech nerd/scientist; or hell, take Colress's team as an example. As a tech guy, he uses steel, electric and psychic type mons to represent science, genious and machinery. Thematically appropriate while sticking to a cohesive base, without having to remain monotype; it wouldn't make much sense for him to use types like fire, water or grass out of nowhere (unless said mons were also part - one of the previously-mentioned types.
We also have Steven Stone who uses all of rock, ground and steel to represent his love for discovering new minerals by digging around. Then there's Alder, who spends a lot of time in nature and thus owns many bug-type pokemon to reflect that (alongside a few other mons representing other similar things). And in general, champions often use type-diverse teams since they (supposedly) have a lot of experiences under their belt, thus they have a lot of different things to represent through many pokemon of different types (and also have more mons than most trainers).
Point being, monotype is often safer and simpler to build teams with; it's intuitive and gets to show off various aspects of a particular type with a wide variety of mons. ....Or at least that's the intent, and -especially in a pve setting- many such monotypes can't escape the click SE move(s) of each type to win issue; at best, they might have 1-2 thin lines of defense that may crumble, and then the rest of the team falls apart like dominoes. However...even in such cases, said leaders don't need to have teams that are strictly monotype; having a wildcard mon here and there to cover for their weaknesses can provide an interesting new sight while offering a newly challenging angle to the fight. Gen 1 bosses/gen 2 e4/DP bosses often tend to do this, with...varying levels of effectiveness (admittedly this is moreso due to a limited selection of mons in the dex rather than anything else). And I wish more bosses in later games/gens do this as well, to at least pretend they're trying with teambuilding choices.
fair point actually
my issue with a lot of these combat systems is specifically when maintenance style play is *all* you're doing. when smt combat is elevated to me it's when you're trying to hit specific combos for instance rather than the usual default rpg playstyle
i think one of the best modern day rpg trends is letting you send your turn to another character who actually needs to do something. unless thats actually been the trend for a long time and im stupid and dumb
i just feel like an rpg should try and have smth on top of maintenance type combat because i dont think every encounter needs to be like, super mindful play, but i think that a well paced rpg will mix up with those "stat diff gg click the buttons loop maintenance" and "i need to find my specific way to break down this issue and make the perfect combo", both are good i just think there needs to be a mix, but thats just my taste personally
my biggest issue and moments where an rpg is solely carried by presentation or as the youth call it "Aura", is when the boss is the same gameplay as a regular fight but longer and genuinely like no spice. and i dont even think this is an exaggerative thing there really are a lot of rpg bosses like this with maybe one unique "The boss is about to do something.." telegraphing everybody block and then you go back to same old same old
personally in my ideal world we have totems and gyms and both done well, the totems are the "type chart tutorial" replacement option and gyms get to do other shit
i dont really like mind this take or like other solutions to the issue, but my distaste of monotypes isn't rlly just a difficulty thing its also, inadvertently, i think it just makes the games less interesting while also actually polarizing little timmies towards not really teambuilding
it may sound dumb bc "well if tepig loses to the water gym they'll catch something else", but i think instead of relying on full counters, averaging out the performance of pokemon across the board (which reducing monotype trainers would do)
timmy tepig may not be terrible into any fight, sure, but also that starly timmy may infer might have way more value beyond just clearing this challenge for the tepig. tepig struggles with some mons in a lot of fights, maybe even getting stunlocked by 1 powerful water or rock in a few matches.
tepig gets value into every fight more consistently, but so does having a more balanced team or iust several team members, because instead of very high or short peaks and valleys, mons have value across the board
like very, as i said, cheren b2w2 best designed gym leader pilled. his design doesn't really demand any specific counter, but rather more hard encourages you to have something else beyond your starter with stats and neutrality that your starter will not hard diff, and even setup to try and defeat potion spam
and like. i dont think little timmies say cheren b2w2 is too hard either
i think that timmy can intuit things like this much more than the monotype system where blind it may be like, esp. when they just put counters to the boss next to the boss, pick up convenient counter, use it, then its an extra revive mon for the starter, repeat
idk im tired and have a headache so apologies if im explaining my point badly
i mean this is fine to me im not even counting "three types" as a monotype trainer. like steven stone is actually pretty chill in my book. im really just against hard monotype bosses being *the standard*
not even that they cant exist but they shouldnt be the expectation in every gym battle or elite 4 most of the bosses in each game
lemme give a 'ant4456 IDEAL monotype trainer use case':
i think zinnia is an example of a well-done monotype trainer and has an actual lore reason, i like that! thats a good one! a dragon clan with like a rayquaza religion makes a lot of sense for this kind of thing and its imo one of the best monotype examples in the series
lore, decently strong team, has a really good reason to exist the way she does, i think it'd go harder if the game wasn't like 15 monotype trainer bosses before her
apologies chat if i am being annoying or doijg a bad explainint i am seriously tired and i dont wanna be annoying lol
Maybe one of them, both not needed. The actual change (and I have been telling this for years) Ice needs is hitting Rock not very effectively and in exchange being neutral to Rock instead of weak. This boosts both types, since Rock gains an extra resistance and Ice becomes not weak to Stealth Rock (a move that too many NON ROCKs learn btw, they should be fewer to make Rock types better) , so they don't have to run Boots half of the time and can develop their offensive ability with optimal items.
Flying is another good choice I feel
I don't really understand how Flying is weak to Electric either.
Birds are vulnerable to lightning (IRL they sometimes do get hit while in flight, though I imagine lightning striking trees is probably more destructive to birds generally) but I think the idea in-universe is more that electric attacks cause Flying-type Pokemon's wings or muscles to stop working properly, i.e. they fall to the ground.
It also has to do with the fact that flying high, or being at a high altitude in general, is putting yourself at higher risk of being hit by a lightning bolt. This is also why Thunder can hit a Pokémon that used Fly or Bounce unless that Pokémon is also immune to Electric-type (i.e. due to Ground-type or having Volt Absorb as an Ability).
I do wonder what competitive would've been like if the steel being weak to electric change went thru in Gen 6 that we learned about from the teraleak. Skarmory and Empoleon probably hate this reality. They were also testing Ice resisting Fairy iirc. I think they even tested Fairy being weak to Ice and Fire which would be nuts lol.
If I were to give Rock any more resists I think they should resist Dragon.
yeah I think Ice resisting Electric, Water, and Ground are the most logical to me that would also give it an actual niche while still not being amazing defensively.
If I were to give Rock any more resists I think they should resist Dragon.
I wouldve made it resist ghost (tombstones, rock salt repeling evil spirits though that could also be a good argument for making it super effective)
I was trying to be restrained as a rock-type enjoyer, ghost would be my second choice for a new resistance. also I honestly don't like that they took away the ghost and dark resistances from steel, I think adding a weakness to steel wouldve been a better way of balancing it than buffing two types that were already very strong.
the other things people have mentioned in this thread like resisting electric or ice would make sense on some level but would buff too many already very good rock types in vgc, so I don't think it would ever happen or that it would be a good idea even if they would do it.
Ghost and Dark were not strong at the time in Gen 6.
Gengar and at-the-time-newcomer Aegislash and to a lesser extent Chandelure are the only Ghosts to ever put up anything resembling good results until Gen 8 introduced Dragapult and Gen 9 introduced Gholdengo and Flutter Mane. And Game Freak then proceeded to shoot both Gengar and Aegislash in the knees.
The only Dark types to have anything going on pre-Gen 6 were generally considered strong in spite of their Dark type not because of it. Incineroar and Kingambit did not exist in Gen 6.
Which feels ironic to me since I assume the logic behind Ground's Electric immunity is the idea of diffusing the electricity into the Earth as the term "Grounding" (possibly inaccurately) suggests in use.
The anime meanwhile has kind of waffled on how this logic applies outside game logic: Brock's Geodude can be knocked out by a supercharged Pikachu while Onix resists it until soaked by the Sprinkler, suggesting it's a resilience but not an outright immunity to electricity; against Blaine, Rhydon shrugs it off directly but goes down to the Lightning Rod conducting through it, suggesting NOW that the issue is the electricity passing through it but normally kept out by an insulated body/armor/etc; and then finally I think of Hoenn, where Ash's Grass-type Treecko shrugs off Pikachu's attacks on the ground but is hit hard by one when it is in mid-air (with diffusing into the ground being cited specifically by Brock).
Ice resisting water makes no logical sense to me.
I feel like Ice and Water would make sense to mutually resist each other.
put ice in the ocean and it doesn't make the ocean freeze but throw water in winter and it becomes ice
a being made out of ice and cold should not be all that affected by being hit with water
as an aside, I just realized that if Ice were to gain resistances to Electric, Ground, and Water, it would become incredibly similar to Grass, which is maybe fitting I guess? lmao