I never buy X Items. Then again, I've done 3 Nuzlockes of USUM and was successful all three times. Never had trouble with Necrozma, although I had to sack a lvl 30 Pyuku in my latest run.
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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
On different versions, I find it interesting that Fire Emblem Fates was brought up because I feel like there's a much better example of this concept: the Oracle games of the Legend of Zelda series. Both can be played standalone, with each focusing on a different aspect (Oracle of Ages is mostly about puzzle solving, while Seasons is all about action), but they can also be linked together to get a true ending and some additional items and character interactions.
I feel like something similar could work with Pikachu315111's idea of having the player start on opposing ends of either Johto or Kanto, with tons of potential for interaction between players beyond trading around version exclusives.
I feel like something similar could work with Pikachu315111's idea of having the player start on opposing ends of either Johto or Kanto, with tons of potential for interaction between players beyond trading around version exclusives.
The reason I chose Fire Emblem Fates is because it’s the only games with multiple versions I’ve played. I’vs never played those legend of Zelda games.
Fates is one of the worst FE Games and nobody can change my mind
Why not recreate that 'powerful, early but limited' move experience with move tutors? You have to seek them out, and they only teach a move to one Pokémon prior to postgame.
That way we can have our TMs and eat them, too. :)
That way we can have our TMs and eat them, too. :)
Simply having them "single use until post game" would be enough without any complicate mechanic...
But even then, you do risk getting the "Scald effect" when you give a 80 BP early stab to a mon and that mon on its own 1v5s the entire early/midgame due to the sheer power.
I rather prefer the Let's Go approach, where every Pokemon, expecially trainers, has access to early strong stabs and coverage (somewhat also true for boss fights in USUM which do use Tutored, TMs and even Egg Moves), and puts you on the opposite side, where you *have* to use your TMs or not stand a chance.
The other problem I have with early strong TMs is that they completely invalidates level up pool. Who cares that your poke gets progressively strong water/electric/fire/x moves when you can teach them a 80 BP move straight away and ignore the rest of the leveling moveset?
I’m going to present a more radical idea altogether: What if we didn’t have TMs at all?
Now, I’m not saying this is necessarily a good idea, but the question with this discussion has been how to handle TMs. Yet in my opinion, TMs are simply a somewhat fundamentally flawed mechanic and a bit of a relic from the early days of the game. Not only does the very idea of TMs not make much sense lorewise (how do they work again?), but they have some core design problems from the get-go, regardless of the type: limited TMs offer strategic value, but heavily punish you for the ‘wrong’ decision and make entering competitive play near impossible, while infinite TMs have potential to trivialize the game (see: Scald in SM) and have no stakes attached to using them.
Now immediately, two problems are presented: TMs not only offer movepool diversity, but also provide incentive for exploration. These two issues must be addressed if TMs are to ever be theoretically abandoned. Here’s what my idea is:
TMs are replaced entirely by tutors, which would be greatly expanded upon. Tutors, like in ORAS and USUM, now accept BP as their currency of choice, but BP would be greatly expanded upon; you now obtain a given quantity from gyms. Let’s say for the 1st gym you earn 100 BP, and the town has two tutors. The first teaches Work Up or Calm Mind, each for 50 BP; you can learn both moves with your given BP. The second has a more powerful move: Ice Beam. However, Ice beam costs 100 BP, meaning you give up the use of Work Up or Clam Mind. This idea lends itself to more strategy and decision making without the permanance of pre-Gen V TMs. In addition, several battle facilties could be added throughout the game as additional, but ultimately minor sources of BP. And for beating the Champion, perhaps you could basically obtain the league’s credit card and be given a potentially infinite amount of BP, meaning that you have a permanent source of moves.
As for exploration, this could be remedied by simply expanding upon Mega Stone and Z-Crystal hunting. Every Mega Stone and Z-Crystal could now be available in areas in the wild, with none as handouts. This makes the process of obtaining all of the Mega Stones and Z-Crystals more rewarding to find, and allows the games to detach Mega Stones and Z-Crystals from the plots of the games as they do each generation.
Now, I’m not saying this is necessarily a good idea, but the question with this discussion has been how to handle TMs. Yet in my opinion, TMs are simply a somewhat fundamentally flawed mechanic and a bit of a relic from the early days of the game. Not only does the very idea of TMs not make much sense lorewise (how do they work again?), but they have some core design problems from the get-go, regardless of the type: limited TMs offer strategic value, but heavily punish you for the ‘wrong’ decision and make entering competitive play near impossible, while infinite TMs have potential to trivialize the game (see: Scald in SM) and have no stakes attached to using them.
Now immediately, two problems are presented: TMs not only offer movepool diversity, but also provide incentive for exploration. These two issues must be addressed if TMs are to ever be theoretically abandoned. Here’s what my idea is:
TMs are replaced entirely by tutors, which would be greatly expanded upon. Tutors, like in ORAS and USUM, now accept BP as their currency of choice, but BP would be greatly expanded upon; you now obtain a given quantity from gyms. Let’s say for the 1st gym you earn 100 BP, and the town has two tutors. The first teaches Work Up or Calm Mind, each for 50 BP; you can learn both moves with your given BP. The second has a more powerful move: Ice Beam. However, Ice beam costs 100 BP, meaning you give up the use of Work Up or Clam Mind. This idea lends itself to more strategy and decision making without the permanance of pre-Gen V TMs. In addition, several battle facilties could be added throughout the game as additional, but ultimately minor sources of BP. And for beating the Champion, perhaps you could basically obtain the league’s credit card and be given a potentially infinite amount of BP, meaning that you have a permanent source of moves.
As for exploration, this could be remedied by simply expanding upon Mega Stone and Z-Crystal hunting. Every Mega Stone and Z-Crystal could now be available in areas in the wild, with none as handouts. This makes the process of obtaining all of the Mega Stones and Z-Crystals more rewarding to find, and allows the games to detach Mega Stones and Z-Crystals from the plots of the games as they do each generation.
But then you still steamroll the game with a 90 BP move for any that learns it.
I know I cited Scald as a broken move in SM, but I don’t believe any one move really has the powerful to steam roll the game (unless it was, like, RBY-era OHKO moves or something like that) so long as there’s enough variety to resist it. The real problem becomes steamrolling the game by overlevelling, but that’s another problem entirely.
And besides, part of this is the appeal of such a strong move early on. You have a choice between one powerful option and two slightly lesser options, and these choices can be further diversified as you traverse through the game and acquire more BP to burn. It’s because these moves are so powerful that there is strategy lended to it.
Hmm, the problem many people have with TMs is that they're offering powerful moves early on. So, maybe the solution should be scaled down to answer that question: how do we scale TMs with the difficulty curve? With a more simple problem, I have a more simple solution: TM Badge Restrictions.
Cool, you just found the Ice Beam TM! But wait! It says here you need to have at least 6 Badges in order to use it!
Getting a Badge (or a Stamp in Alola) doesn't really do much aside letting a higher level Traded Pokemon listen to you. But a high powered move could just be as "broken" as letting you use a high level Pokemon, so why not also add Badge # restriction on TMs? This not only solves the issue at hand but also allows powerful TMs to be found early on since, even if you find them, you can't use it until the get the needed number of Badges. This would also promote you using your Pokemon's natural moves more, a TM move now probably being more situational or an ace-in-the-hole.
Cool, you just found the Ice Beam TM! But wait! It says here you need to have at least 6 Badges in order to use it!
Getting a Badge (or a Stamp in Alola) doesn't really do much aside letting a higher level Traded Pokemon listen to you. But a high powered move could just be as "broken" as letting you use a high level Pokemon, so why not also add Badge # restriction on TMs? This not only solves the issue at hand but also allows powerful TMs to be found early on since, even if you find them, you can't use it until the get the needed number of Badges. This would also promote you using your Pokemon's natural moves more, a TM move now probably being more situational or an ace-in-the-hole.
Ehhh unless they shift to a less structured gym order (aka fight gyms in multiple paths) this doesn't seem to be any different from making it so that you just don't find the TM until after the 6th gym or so, whether that be buying it or picking it up.
Ice is basically the best offensive type in the game, and several Water types (including every Water starter so far) can learn Ice Beam.
Pikachu315111's idea of adding badge/stamp restrictions to TMs makes more sense, honestly. Especially as something Game Freak might consider if they wanted to dial back the usefulness of infinite-use TMs. They could also go with making them purchasable in Poke Marts only after obtaining a certain number of badges.
Still, there's no real clear answer to it, and we should probably stop speculating how it can be addressed now...
... or you could make it only available to find after the sixth badge.
Doesn’t solve the solution that you could trade someone to teach the Ice Beam TM then trade it back.
That takes too much effort to be considered unbalanced. At that point you could trade a Pokémon for someone else to train it to high levels and trade it back, and that's not unbalanced because of the required effort.
It trivializes the game, yes, but it's fine.
Unbalanced is "takes little effort, gives high reward".
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Well the only other solution is making it the Pokemon's Level that's the requirement to teach the move.
But I agree with Detective Barricade , I think we've talked about this subject. Fact is I don't think they'll be changing the TM system anytime soon. Heck, let's not forget even if they do carefully place TM around so that you only find the powerful ones later, Z-Crystals are a bigger problem as they're a one PP nuke and usually that's all you need.
New Unpopular Opinion: For all the things USUM got wrong, I do feel it did improve on Hau's character. Most notably is Hau interacting with Guzma in Maile Garden which makes Hau really thing about what the Island Challenge means to him which leads to him taking training more seriously (after the Aether Paradise raid) and ultimately becoming the Champion Challenger instead of Kukui.
But I agree with Detective Barricade , I think we've talked about this subject. Fact is I don't think they'll be changing the TM system anytime soon. Heck, let's not forget even if they do carefully place TM around so that you only find the powerful ones later, Z-Crystals are a bigger problem as they're a one PP nuke and usually that's all you need.
Eh, I feel that's a bit too dark of a topic since people died...
New Unpopular Opinion: For all the things USUM got wrong, I do feel it did improve on Hau's character. Most notably is Hau interacting with Guzma in Maile Garden which makes Hau really thing about what the Island Challenge means to him which leads to him taking training more seriously (after the Aether Paradise raid) and ultimately becoming the Champion Challenger instead of Kukui.
Okay new unpopular opinion (of my own) to replace the one I asked about.
Shiny hunting, even with SOS is hard, as well as getting worm hole shinies, as people find these easy.
(my under 20 calls shiny inkay was a lucky break, and I don't keep my ds on while charging, as overcharging ruins your battery life and can make it swell (which the latter creates the risk of it blowing up)
so shiny hunts are even harder for me (and I can't RNG)
Shiny hunting, even with SOS is hard, as well as getting worm hole shinies, as people find these easy.
(my under 20 calls shiny inkay was a lucky break, and I don't keep my ds on while charging, as overcharging ruins your battery life and can make it swell (which the latter creates the risk of it blowing up)
so shiny hunts are even harder for me (and I can't RNG)
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Remember that thing about punctuation? That wasn't just a one-day event we had going. Please put in some commas and periods, it kind of baffles me that you bothered to use brackets but not those.
Assuming of course that gen 8 doesn't just shove the Z-Crystals to post-game like they did with the Mega Stones.
The thing with Wormhole shinies is the odds get better as you get further along the warp ride. (and don't fall in the level 1 wormholes that litter the ride, though even these offer a 1% chance for a shiny, which is still way better than 1 in 4096 elsewhere without modifiers) For SOS battles, improved shiny odds don't start until you've beaten at least 70 Pokemon in the current chain, putting it at about 1 in 1024.
But most believe shiny hunting should be difficult, as then it makes the shinies more valuable. I personally don't really care. Sure I'll cling to a shiny I happen to encounter or hatch. but I'm not that interested in shiny hunting.
My personal unpopular opinions about shinies: They lose all value the moment you start hunting for them. To me, shinies are meant to be randomly encountered while you're doing something else. It's like drawing a perfect hand in poker: Great fun if it happens during a game, no so much if you're sitting there on your own drawing cards all day until it turns up.
You know, since Shinies probably are now just coded palette swaps instead of their own separate sprite/model, they could probably give each Pokemon more alternate color options. Make some brighter, make some darker, not to mention all the special colors you can do (within reason, I wouldn't want all Pokemon to have an entire rainbow of color selection; I'm thinking like if evolution stages are different colors swap them (like a pink skin Mareep, yellow skin Flaaffy, and a blue skin Ampharos) or maybe even have Pokemon who's base colors are reversed (like a black fur Absol with a white face and blades) or inversed (like a red Bulbasaur with a purple bulb)).
As someone who shiny hunts, I definitely see where you’re coming from, and every unexpected shiny is a far more exciting experience than hunting for one.
For me, the value of shiny hunts comes more from the hunt itself, and less so the shiny itself. Pokemon is, at least in part, supposed to be about hunting and capturing rare Pokémon, yet all that usually consists of is running around in grass. Shiny hunting restores that feeling in a sense.
Which ties into another unpopular opinion I have: encounter rates are a thing of the past. DexNav mechanics are infinitely superior, and even besides that there are far more interesting ways to incorporate finding Pokémon than running in the grass hoping you get lucky with a 1% encounter rate.
Honestly, the Let's Go approach is probably one of the best we have had to "rare spawns" in probably the entire series.
Not only you do see the wild pokemon, so you don't have to be triggering encounters over and over in the hope you run into what you need, but also you do have a actual way to "force" rare spawns (in fact, two, Lures and chains).
That approach both removes the frustration factor of the 3000th Rattata spawn, on top of rewarding putting effort in the hunt (in Let's Go case, by building up the chain, it could very well be a defeat chain rather than a catch chain in the core series obviously).