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Here's a take for you all. Fans of Gen 4 and 5 are the biggest grognards active in the fandom. Genwunners probably outnumber them in total, but by in large they are not as major a force in the fandom as fans of Gen 4 and 5, especially 5.
Here's a take for you all. Fans of Gen 4 and 5 are the biggest grognards active in the fandom. Genwunners probably outnumber them in total, but by in large they are not as major a force in the fandom as fans of Gen 4 and 5, especially 5.
That may be true for now, but with Pokémon Legends: Z-A on the way, Generation 6, or more specifically, Pokémon XY may just be next in line to be the subject of "look at this hidden gem / actually the best games in the series" discourse. I write this as a strong Generation 6 fan.
I don't actually know if this is unpopular but I can't think of where else it'd go...
I wouldn't care about the lack of voice acting if they didn't keep making scenes in the last few gens that seem designed around having voice acting, and outside of those scenes I couldn't care less.
So this isn't just a one liner, I have to somewhat disagree on this. Splitting the world in half into water and land is great to tie it into the whole story of land and sea needing each other for everything to coexist peacefully. However, the water biomes are mostly mid, which detracts from the motif since they are now boring. The exception is routes 132, 133 and 134, with there fast flowing waters making for something interesting.
The land routes are pretty good, with the routes before fallarbar town (the ash routes, if I'm getting the town name wrong) being very atmospheric, and the jungle routes including the weather institute being something I don't think we have seen much besides the grass trial area in sm.
Idk it's leagues and bounds above any other, but is for me the best region map.
So this isn't just a one liner, I have to somewhat disagree on this. Splitting the world in half into water and land is great to tie it into the whole story of land and sea needing each other for everything to coexist peacefully. However, the water biomes are mostly mid, which detracts from the motif since they are now boring. The exception is routes 132, 133 and 134, with there fast flowing waters making for something interesting.
The land routes are pretty good, with the routes before fallarbar town (the ash routes, if I'm getting the town name wrong) being very atmospheric, and the jungle routes including the weather institute being something I don't think we have seen much besides the grass trial area in sm.
Idk it's leagues and bounds above any other, but is for me the best region map.
eh the ash routes are the only part of hoenn which are actually pretty cool, and thats mostly because of the cool effect with the grass changing colours as you walk on them. the rest of hoenn just feels like standard pokemon region stuff that doesnt really stand leagues above other regions. as for the water routes, having such a large portion of your late game map consist of same-y, uninteresting stretches of ocean drags down the fun of exploring the region. i dont care how well it "ties it into the whole story of land and sea needing each other" as you so put it, if the actual experience is boring then it drags the underlying idea and makes the region as a whole less impressive.
like hoenn is still fine as a region, but it doesnt really feel like anything special compared to other regions. i could probably see why it gets thought of as such when it came after kanto and johto, two regions which could be considered pretty "basic" for the most part when it comes to map design, so having something a bit more "varied" feels like an immediate upgrade, but i find that on its own it just feels like any other region, and that just because there is a variety of biomes in hoenn it doesnt necessarily make it worthy of any special praise
That may be true for now, but with Pokémon Legends: Z-A on the way, Generation 6, or more specifically, Pokémon XY may just be next in line to be the subject of "look at this hidden gem / actually the best games in the series" discourse. I write this as a strong Generation 6 fan.
They already were doing that, but mostly talking about the potential of a 3rd entry (South Kalos this, South Kalos that), or just talking about the anime (sth I'm not even a fan of)
They already were doing that, but mostly talking about the potential of a 3rd entry (South Kalos this, South Kalos that), or just talking about the anime (sth I'm not even a fan of)
You are right, but that is not quite what I am getting at. I believe there may be an influx of fans who advocate the idea that Pokémon X & Y are objectively among the best games in the series, not merely somewhat underrated as I believe they are. They may point to things such as the introduction of Mega Evolution, the large Kalos Pokedex, and character customization among other things.
Pokémon Black & White Versions seem to have gone through this arc themselves: at launch, (based on what I can gather about how they were received) they were the most controversial entries in the series, and they had relatively low sales. Now, however, those games and their sequels are frequently ranked as among the best in the series thanks to many Pokémon of Unova Pokedex becoming fan favorites , characters such as N and Ghetsis and the Pokémon World Tournament.
Then again, how "online" is the average Pokemon fan? How does one objectively rank Pokemon games? So many questions... I was comfortable writing these posts in "Unpopular Opinions" because, for some reason, I have not read any forecast to this effect on Twitter, Serebii, Smogon, or anywhere else I go to gauge Pokémon fan discourse.
I'm at the point where every region doesn't feel particularly special (maybe Unova being much more heavily urbanized?). We've been through the kind of grasslands and forests people live near irl too many times. I want them to take the fantasy worldbuilding out of small one-off areas and make a fully alien region.
Then again, how "online" is the average Pokemon fan? How does one objectively rank Pokemon games? So many questions... I was comfortable writing these posts in "Unpopular Opinions" because, for some reason, I have not read any forecast to this effect on Twitter, Serebii, Smogon, or anywhere else I go to gauge Pokémon fan discourse.
I'll give you a hint: the largest majority of pokemon players gives no fucks of tierlists, complaints, plot, difficulty and gameplay, doesn't even know what internet is outside of maybe Roblox, and rarely touches the games again after beating the plot.
All they cared in the past, and care now, is how cute the starters are.
Also on a slightly less sarcastic and more serious remark, most Pokemon players, similarly to other franchises, will just consider the "best" Pokemon games the ones they played first, expecially if they did play them as kids.
It's simply a "issue" of the first experience of a game like those as kid trumping anything you can play after, because you cant have "another first time" for picking your starter, evolving your first pokemon, beating the rival, becoming the champion, and all those things.
Not exactly true for *everyone* but you'll quickly notice how it's very consistent.
I myself have fond memories of my playthroughs of Blue, Yellow and Silver (and I still remind spamming Dugtrio and Graveler against anything in Blue and *actually getting stuck on Lorelei* cause every other pokemon I had was lvl 30 whereas those two were level 60+).
(As much as I enjoyed playing the gen 1 and 2 games as kid, and I'll never forget my gigastupid duels with friends using my 3 separate dragonites with different elements as well as full eevolution teams, I have just grown up to embrace QoL and convenience and gave up on any hope that those games will ever be difficult. I have embraced the forbidden art of "just have fun and enjoy the cute pink pokemon", something I would recommend to half of this forum as well)
I'll give you a hint: the largest majority of pokemon players gives no fucks of tierlists, complaints, plot, difficulty and gameplay, doesn't even know what internet is outside of maybe Roblox, and rarely touches the games again after beating the plot.
All they cared in the past, and care now, is how cute the starters are.
Don't worry, I am well aware the games and Pokémon themselves are primarily marketed to 6- to 12-year-olds. That was mostly rhetorical head-spinning at the thought of trying to establish anything objective... just read a few In-Game Tier Lists threads to see what I mean. Now that I think of it, that is why I don't post here nearly as often as I would like to, I can't convince myself of the soundness of my own ideas.
Don't worry, I am well aware the games and Pokémon themselves are primarily marketed to 6- to 12-year-olds. That was mostly rhetorical head-spinning at the thought of trying to establish anything objective... just read a few In-Game Tier Lists threads to see what I mean. Now that I think of it, that is why I don't post here nearly as often as I would like to, I can't convince myself of the soundness of my own ideas.
I made this a while ago. It's an intended route through pre-Fly Hoenn. (Blue-Yellow-Purple-White-Red-Black-Green)(red just means "get there" because there's too many options).
What makes Hoenn fun to me as a map isn't that it has diverse environments etc, what I enjoy is how you interact with the world. Because on the surface it's a fairly linear game, as always for Pokemon. Which way to go next is always fairly obvious. Until Meteor Falls. After that, you've almost encircled the left half of the map once, and the game says "okay, now get back to the volcano". And there's a few ways to do it, all of which are fairly obvious if you payed attention your first time around. And going those ways gives you the opportunity to use field moves you didn't have before, fight(or rematch) trainers you skipped, etc. It lets you reexplore whichever part of the map you want, without making that feel like wasted time. And then you get to Flannery, and again the game says "now get back to Norman". After Norman, it tells you to figure out how to return to Mauville. Each time you have a new HM to use that opens up more hidden parts of the map, possibly a different bike, etc. And even when you get to the second half of the map, it's still circles that send you back where you came. It's a map that really sold "you're exploring and finding new stuff" by actually making you do it.
Yes, you CAN explore areas you were already at in other generations. But then it's a conscious decision you have to make, and it feels artificial. "Okay, I got Surf and Fly. Let's revisit everywhere I was before and check for hidden Rare Candies." Hoenn makes going back to previous areas and finding hidden stuff a natural part of navigating the map, which is both fun and a good way to teach kids playing the game that that is something you can do.
Man, all this Hoenn propaganda is making me want to play the games again.
me yapping ab Hoenn
Around this time last year, I Nuzlocked Emerald a few times, but the second I used a modded version because I don't like the Pokemon selection. I think it's entirely aesthetical, as I like Johto's new Pokemon, and like Platinum's regional dex. Funnily enough, due to my gripes with the dex, I never really took full advantage of the retracing your steps portion of Hoenn. I do find the midgame super fun so I usually speed post-Electric gym through Skyla.
My gripe is that the water portion of the game is mid: it doesn't introduce enough new Pokemon, the routes all blend together, and diving is especially disappointing. I only half remember what those ugly underground beasts look like. I understand mechanically why its interesting to have so much variation of Pokemon level when you're surfing, but it makes training hard and makes me wanna repel my way through it. And in Emerald, there is a lot of back and forthing at the height of the plot. I prefer it to being dragged around by a bunch of cutscenes, but discovering Sky Pillar on my own instead of being told to go there would be better. And also not putting a trainer there that I definitely remember every time and don't accidentally lose a Pokemon too in multiple Nuzlockes.
But that's not why I made this post. I've been replaying Crystal to get the taste of Sun/Moon out of my mouth. And after disliking HG/SS to my delight, I found I still love Crystal. I intend to make a larger scale post discussing why I feel like Crystal is a superior experience to the remakes. But first I wanted to address something: I was hate-watching a YouTube video before dinner talking about "Bad Johto Pokemon" where one of the Pokemon mentioned was Phanpy. After dinner, I swept through the Goldenrod underground fight against my rival with Donphan. It was sooo much fun too. Rollout to KO Golat, Feraligatr, and Sneasel (if my son was stupid enough to bring out an ice type against the fifth turn of rollout I'd disown him too), then mud slap gastly who cursed itself down, and then used Mud-Slap on the last 1-2 Pokemon to KO them in order to avoid accruing any Curse damage, as I only had 1/3 of my health left.
Phanpy was shit on in the video because it has a low encounter rate, and a "bad first-stage" and "bad moveset." I guess I lucked out because I caught Phanpy right away a few nights ago when I stayed up too late, but with how fast you get encounters in Gen 2, I was seeing several Teddiursa before I gave up on them and switched to Phanpy. I switch trained and got the xp share before tackling the Team Rocket hideout in Mahagony Town, and shortly after beating Pryce, it evolved into Donphan. After that, I did look up its moveset to see when it would get a good ground move, and to my horror, I too thought I had screwed up. But after giving it Strength (which in Gen 2 gets the 12.5 % Normal Badge Boost so its close to a 90 BP move) and Mud-Slap, it was practically one-shotting everything on the Water Routes surround whirl island. Eventually it got rollout, and now its a wrap.
My hot take isn't that Phanpy rules (although it does), but that Pokemon fans tend to overestimate the difficulty of training up Pokemon that aren't prductive right away, and overestimate the need for a strong STAB move that utilizes your better attacking stat. Sure, I've gone out of my way to do a little switch training, and fought a fairly high amount of wild Pokemon in a few of the dungeons, but my total time when I'm close to finishing the Team Rocket Radio Tower thing is 25 hours, and that's with a lot of non-grinding backtracking, and I trained up 1-2 Pokemon worth of xp I decided not to use. And I already have a whole team of 6 right at the level I want them at pre-Claire.
idk. less so on here, but a lot of Pokemon fans on Reddit and YouTube act like training up a Gyarados is a punishment worse than spending a year in prison when it's only an hour of your time if that, and you literally get Gyarados afterwards. I'm playing on 3ds with no speed up, and finishing a game's main part in <35 hours when I'm being leisurely isn't bad, even with a small map like Johto's. In longer games, it's about the same. Also, for all the talk of "everyone has the same team of 6 in Johto/Sinnoh" may be true in result, I think these regions have a ton of viable options. Sometimes you do have to wait a little longer to explore some of those options, but that's part of designing a region: you can't put all the cool Pokemon at the beginning or it would be boring at the end. But I'll be expanding on this more when I talk about the Physical Special Split in the Crystal vs. HGSS post.
Now I do think it would be cool to use the fossil Pokemon earlier in FRLG... but that's a story for another day.
also: I may have brought this up before, but again, after facing Whitney: she's not that bad. Yes, I may be a grown man, but there are other gym leaders that give me substantially more trouble. I did wipe to her once this time, but that was because she got hella lucky with crits and not missing. I went back with 0 training and won. Had i not been lazy and leveled up my eggsecutor to 13, it wouldn't have happened because I could have leech seeded Miltank instead of beating it down with ineffective attacks.
All you gotta do if you have Quilava is spam Smokescreen so Whitney can't hit jack, after Quilava goes down or you get bored, go to Eggy and set up reflect + hypnosis. Then bring in Polycule or wtv Red's bff Pokemon is called and spam the water move that can cause speed drops so you outspeed Miltank. Then you flinch her with headbutt. if you don't have Quilava, exit the game and erase your save and create a new one where you made a better starter choice.
Not even the hardest fight in the game thus far, that would be those three optional trainers on the route who semi bum-rush you all at once with those strong water Pokemon (the ones you have to surf to get through. I assume Claire and Lance + Elite 4 member who burns me for running 4/6th weak to grass will be harder.
My hot take isn't that Phanpy rules (although it does), but that Pokemon fans tend to overestimate the difficulty of training up Pokemon that aren't prductive right away, and overestimate the need for a strong STAB move that utilizes your better attacking stat.
I've noticed recently that fans tend to be judgemental when selecting what Pokemon to choose. One example, Luxray is one of the Sinnoh fan favorites, but nowdays you'll have people pointing out how flawed its movepool and stat distribuition is, despite Luxray having done good work for many DPPt players in their adventure.
Maybe it's bc of the rise of tier lists and online rankings, which plenty of them have well researched, but keep in mind that in the end, they are suggestions. Pokemon is a game series that allows you to pick multiple options throughout your adventure, and the difficulty still remains do-able. Chikorita is one of the most infamous examples, it's weak to a lot of gyms but, like, you're not going to stick to just Chikorita, right? Besides, with Reflect up Chikorita can solo Falkner lol, there's plenty of factors to consider if a Pokemon does good or not, but most importantly it comes down to what the player wants to use.
For another example, and a personal of mine, Crabrawler. Yeah, it took forever to evolve, literally the final dungeon of the game, but I kept it bc I just liked having that crabby friend, and it was more satisfying when it finished off a stronger mon. In the final battle against Kukui, Crabominable one shot Snorlax, which then I later heard that this mon in particular caused many players trouble.
Also since this is the unpopular opinions thread, I want to add that Crabominable is based and ppl took the Crabrawler trailer too seriously
crabominable is one of my favorite pokemon and i love them. everytime people redesign it it always loses its charm and just looks boring, which is why when i redesign pokemon i always make sure that the popular ones get uglier so they fit My taste and make fans of it hate them #revenge
I completely disagree with this. Flygon should have Levitate, and only Levitate. This is something I believe in pretty steadfastly, though I don't actually know if it's strictly unpopular. That said, I don't believe this because of any issues in regards to Balance; the big issue with Levitate instead comes with Flavor.
Let's take Flygon as our example here. Here's a nice visual aid.
It's Flying. Visually. You can tell on sight alone.
That is an issue unique to Levitate alone. There isn't another ability that is so self evident.
So it'd be a bit bizarre for Flygon to not have the effects of Levitate. It's already just floating there.
Except visually appearing to float isn't unique to Pokemon with the ability Levitate. Take Magnezone;
So what I think is most important is this is not the consistency of Pokemon which appear to be floating visually having Levitate; It's that the Pokemon which have Levitate only have Levitate. You can mistakenly expect a Pokemon to have Levitate when it may in fact not, but you should not be put in a situation where a Pokemon that could have Levitate instead has some other ability instead. This places the ambiguity of Levitate on a Pokemon purely in the realm of knowledge checks, rather than ambiguity that persists on a battle by battle basis, and makes any case of learning one which can stick, an especially important detail in a game built on knowledge building. In this sense, the importance of Flavor being consistent on front-facing elements than about capturing small bits of detail Flavor. It's significantly more important to reduce the friction inherent to building a knowledge bank about these games than it is to maximally represent small bits of flavor in gameplay. You can reasonably complain that it makes zero sense how Misdreavus and Mismagius ignore Ground type attacks, while Flutter Mane doesn't. But as far as building an understanding of the rule, you only need one piece of input to reframe your understanding of the situation and adapt for it in the future.
However... I do see the point of these sorts of thoughts on Pokemon with Levitate, and it sort of represents what I view as a pretty notable flaw of the system around abilities - that there is only room to give Pokemon one trait which exists outside the parameters of Type, Base Stats, and Move access. Individual Pokemon having access to only one ability of a possible multiple for a species can lead to unbalanced gameplay functions choking each other out, or odd instances where pieces of a Pokemon's gameplay design are mutually exclusive for no other reason. Meanwhile Pokemon species being locked to one ability to ensure they have a piece of gameplay function that should never be mutually exclusive.
Levitate is an ability which causes this issue reliably. With three total anomalous exceptions*, every single Pokemon with the ability Levitate has Levitate as its sole ability. At one point, Levitate as a sole ability was understandable from a balancing standpoint; even just changing a neutrality to Ground into an immunity, not to mention benefits against the likes of niche elements like Arena Trap and Spikes, was plenty strong enough a benefit to compare favorably to every other ability in the game on most Pokemon - at least aside from the ones which were blatantly game warping. (Shadow Tag, Huge Power, Wonder Guard, Drizzle, etc.) This did not last for long - the scope, consistency, and sheer power of abilities only rose as the generations went on, and now Levitate is only mediocre in cases where it doesn't actively remove a weakness. Now, from a pure balancing perspective, giving Pokemon like Mismagius, Cryogonal, or the aforementioned Flygon a second or third ability on top of Levitate would barely be worth noting. Alongside Power Creep, abilities have also suffered a weird sort of Flavor Creep - modern Pokemon designs tend to rely much more on having distinct abilities that create unique gameplay styles and refer back to specific bits of flavor detail. So without room to add a specific ability to refer back to flavor, not having an ability past Levitate can seem be undoubtedly boring. I think this mindset probably applies internally too; while Levitate was among the more common generic abilities in Generations 3, 4, and 5, since Generation 6 there have only been 2 new Pokemon with Levitate; Vikavolt and Galarian Weezing, the latter of which was made to introduce a flashy new ability and mainly kept Levitate as a way to keep parity with a pre-existing gameplay design. I do enjoy relatively mundane ability effects like Levitate more than most, but even in that enjoyment I can see why some are sad that Mismagius can't have Magician, why Cryogonal can't have Ice Body, or why Flygon can't have an ability that interacts with Sand, even if I agree with the way the cookie crumbled overall.
As far as a solution to this would go, there aren't really many options. I've seen innate Levitate suggested before, but that is a solution that only really applies in this one case, as I think going beyond Levitate could make such a system balloon in complexity in an undesirable way. The system and the norm around Levitate are designed to be as easy on player memory as possible, and I agree with this as a primary goal even when it contradicts Flavor, similar to stuff like Bonemerang and the like whiffing into Flying types. I do know of that one fangame / hack that gave every Pokemon species Innate Traits as a mechanic; these were just effects from Abilities which applied to every Pokemon in a species, and existed alongside Abilities as a mechanic. Even ignoring how it seemingly had the goal of artificial overcomplexity for maximum clickbait appeal, I just don't know how much I'd like such a system flying into the face of the simplicity present currently. In truth though, a system that utilizes a dual Innate + Ability system with considerably more constraint would be something I'd love to see tested.
Bronzor and Bronzong - These two have an active hidden information mixup going. The idea is that these two both originally only had 2 weaknesses, those being to Ground and Fire, with Levitate and Heatproof potentially covering for those respective weaknesses. Notably, this concept only applies in player vs player situations; the way the games originally handled enemy trainers, opponents with Pokemon that could have two (normal) abilities always used their first ability, which in this case is Levitate. As for why they went out of their way to break the at the time hard rule for these two, I'm not entirely sure. It could be to do with Bronzong's intended use case as a manual weather setter, making it less harmed by the sun it sets for teammates; it could be to do with making a Steel type that can resist Dragon moves while walling at least 2 of the super effective coverage types into Steel, making Dragon less incredibly dominant, and it even could be the case that they were originally meant to be Heatproof only but Levitate was added as a band-aid balancing solution to Garchomp. Regardless, these are the most brazen and fully realized cases of Hidden Information deception involving abilities, and can be understood to have purposely ignored the rule to create a truly unique gameplay function.
Duskull - An exception that is very simple. At the time, Duskull was the sole case of a Pokemon with the ability Levitate than evolves into a Pokemon without Levitate. Originally, Duskull simply followed the Levitate rule, solely having Levitate, while Dusclops and Dusknoir both had Pressure as their sole ability. Then in Black and White, Hidden Abilities were introduced, and the designers had two choices; arbitrarily lock Dusclops and (the in all likelihood unintentionally underwhelming) Dusknoir out of receiving a Hidden Ability because of the Levitate rule, or to break it for Duskull to allow its evolutions to get a Hidden Ability. Notably, because the Hidden Ability they gave to Dusclops and Dusknoir was Frisk, there is no ambiguous case to be found with Duskull; any Duskull which doesn't announce it's ability on switch in must be Levitating. Honestly, it's very unlikely the idea to give Duskull an ability which announces itself was a conscious choice to remove any hidden information mindgames, it's just a fitting concept for Dusclops and Dusknoir that happens to fit this rule decently.
Koffing and Weezing - These three are a weirder case, and one that sort of loops back into the point of the rest of the post. When introduced, Koffing and Weezing both followed the Levitate rule as expected, and they continued to do so for another 4 generations. When Sword and Shield came along, they came alongside Galarian Weezing, which introduced the new ability Neutralizing Gas - in the very first moment Galarian Weezing was introduced, it was made apparent that it would be breaking the Levitate rule, as it was shown to get both Levitate and Neutralizing Gas as regular abilities. This essentially required that Koffing and Kantonian Weezing get a retcon to match, as otherwise Neutralizing Gas would be unavailable unless caught directly, and the two were given Neutralizing Gas as a standard ability. Additionally, being given a standardized ability set meant Galarian Weezing also got a Hidden Ability, Misty Surge. In turn, Koffing and Kantonian Weezing also got a Hidden Ability, that being Stench. Important to the designs of these ability sets was the handling of ambiguity. For as strong and impactful as Neutralizing Gas and Misty Surge are, they are both abilities with plainly announce themselves upon Galarian Weezing's entry, meaning once again an attentive player will never see an ambiguous ability with this form. For the Kantonian counterpart, this does not strictly remain true; unlike Misty Surge, Stench does not announce itself on entry. However, Stench would probably rank among the very least impactful abilities the game has ever seen, (in battle) especially because Koffing nor Weezing is especially fast, so unless being grounded somehow advantages them, (a possibility that exists but that I have never seen unfold personally, ) the potential to leverage this hidden information in a real game setting remains very, very limited. However, Stench does make boatloads of flavorful sense for both of these Pokemon to have - again, looping back in to the point of the post.
Bonus Section! Stratagem and Equilibra (+ pre-evos but who cares) - No you are not crazy, these are not real Pokemon. They are creations of the Create-A-Pokemon (CAP for short) community on Showdown, and in short they build fake Pokemon that are highly specialized to suit their distinct, slightly stronger version of standard OU. As an extremely brief rundown of these two fake Pokemon; Stratagem is a fast and frail pure Rock type with a statline comparable to Inteleon or Jolteon (with a teeny bit more meat on the bone) and the abilities Levitate and Technician. Equilibra is a Steel / Ground type with a statline comparable to Heatran or Magearna (with a notable bias towards Special Defense) and the abilities Levitate and Bulletproof.
The whole process of CAP does go to great pains to try and make their designs seem at least plausibly in line with the vanilla rosters which exist at the time of their creation, even if the increasingly staggering demands of power creep and prime focus on metagame viability continuously push Pokemon through those boundaries in some areas, most notably with Stat Totals and Movepools. The ability designs on these don't really fit into that conversation though; they just neglect the whole point of this dynamic. Both designs were given Levitate as a primary ability, and then were allowed to move forward to be given a secondary ability per the democratic process they used for adding traits. Between the discussion in 2008 about Stratagem and the discussion in 2019 about Equilibra, despite some users pushing for neither to receive a second ability, none of them really talked within the framing of the precedent around Levitate's unique distribution, at least so far as I can tell from the forum archives. Both of them have ended up as Pokemon that persistently threaten Levitate, but can throw opponents off with a Hidden Information mixup; for Stratagem, it mainly leveraged Technician Hidden Power and Vacuum Wave, while Equilibra used the threat of having either ability to play greedily into Psychic types that strictly rely on Focus Blast for coverage.
Thing is, this issue is a lot less big a deal with CAPs. After all, in any situation in which CAPs are going to exist, players are expected to be playing in competition, and moreover you can also just hover your mouse over them or tap them with your finger, and they'll directly tell you the bulk of their mixup. (I'm ignoring a larger tangent on why Bulletproof is the second worst ability in the franchise design wise imo but that can be for another time.) Being built for an environment and suited for that environment is fine. I just find it itches me that these designs go to so many lengths to try and have parity with vanilla design conventions and then completely miss on some tiny details. Not really any more than that, but also where else would I put a thought like this.
I've noticed recently that fans tend to be judgemental when selecting what Pokemon to choose. One example, Luxray is one of the Sinnoh fan favorites, but nowdays you'll have people pointing out how flawed its movepool and stat distribuition is, despite Luxray having done good work for many DPPt players in their adventure.
Maybe it's bc of the rise of tier lists and online rankings, which plenty of them have well researched, but keep in mind that in the end, they are suggestions. Pokemon is a game series that allows you to pick multiple options throughout your adventure, and the difficulty still remains do-able. Chikorita is one of the most infamous examples, it's weak to a lot of gyms but, like, you're not going to stick to just Chikorita, right? Besides, with Reflect up Chikorita can solo Falkner lol, there's plenty of factors to consider if a Pokemon does good or not, but most importantly it comes down to what the player wants to use.
For another example, and a personal of mine, Crabrawler. Yeah, it took forever to evolve, literally the final dungeon of the game, but I kept it bc I just liked having that crabby friend, and it was more satisfying when it finished off a stronger mon. In the final battle against Kukui, Crabominable one shot Snorlax, which then I later heard that this mon in particular caused many players trouble.
Also since this is the unpopular opinions thread, I want to add that Crabominable is based and ppl took the Crabrawler trailer too seriously
In the underrated Pokemon thread on here, I saw someone praise Abomasnow, which similarly to Crabominable, has a lot of weaknesses. And it made me realize that with a lot of Pokemon, their success hinges on your desire to use it (to be patient with it and to choose a suitable position for it) and skill level (in-game knowledge, understanding how to maximize its role). If you don't lead with Abomasnow, and part of its role is taking down flying types, you're gonna struggle because every time you switch it in, it's gonna get chipped substantially. Alternatively, if you lead with it, it may be able to ice shard and get enough KOs to satisfy that role. Or maybe you should focus on its offensive capabilities elsewhere.
Now, I do think some Pokemon like say, Stunfisk, are close to unusably bad based on experience with them, and would assume the same with Kricketune and Lebyda, but I'm sure if I tried them out and was patient with them, I could make them a contributor in some capacity.
Speaking of Abomasnow, I was thinking about moves and abilities that varied in efficacy in an in-game playthrough vs in a Nuzlocke/competing against a fellow human
This was inspired by Guts. Guts obviously rules in a Nuzlocke and sometimes competitively, but without specific planning, it's surprisingly hard to take advantage of. You can't use it for route clearing because you're sustaining too much damage, and even in a boss fight, unless you're one shotting and outspeeding everything, the extra damage can be hard to play around.
Another one is obviously Pursuit for the human player. As the AI rarely switches out, you're not going to be able to take advantage of it beyond having a 40 BP dark move. Of course your enemy Pokemon stand to benefit greatly tho. I even got Pursuited in Crystal lmaooo. For the same reason, trapping abilities rarely benefit the human user, unless you're doing Perish Song hijynks
Then there's weather. Having ttar or Abomasnow rules, but the chip can affect your team without having leftovers healing, or having a team built around the weather. Against Red I was gonna set Rain in order to remove Hail chip and have 100% accurate Thunders, but kept having small amounts of trouble due to nerfing my own Typhlosion lol. Although that's a planning issue as much as anything.
Gen 8's anti-hazard content was overkill in general (boots, spikeless discount skarmory with no real skarmory). Gholdengo is the expected result of the pendulum swinging that far.
Gen 8's anti-hazard content was overkill in general (boots, spikeless discount skarmory with no real skarmory). Gholdengo is the expected result of the pendulum swinging that far.
Boots was a necessary evil due to the problems Pokémon that are 4x weak to Sneaky Pebbles had for four generations straight. Everything else listed here is completely understandable.