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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
Same! None of my friends play it but I love it.
For the most part I agree with this, and I find it baffling that many people don't. I feel like every type should be able to function properly and have actual good attacks for different parts of the game.
IMO every type should get four very similar moves for both physical and special attacks, that are given to almost every pokemon of a type, so that every pokemon ca have at least one stab option for different sections of the game, and for things like battle facilities, competitive, etc. They wouldn't be the exact same but would follow the same battle purpose
The first would be a very weak attack for the beginning of the game, the second would be a stronger attack but still much weaker compared to late game options, the third would be a strong and consistent attack, and the fourth would be a really strong attack that has a downside. As an example, for special Fire types these could be Ember, Flame Burst, Flamethrower, and Fire Blast.
I do think beyond this, types should have a bunch of unique moves for themselves (Freeze Dry, Electro Ball, Solar Beam, etc), but I think those four basics should be around for every type and physical/special attack.
That's what makes it such an unpopular opinion.
People think that wanting reliable STAB options means that this is all we want.
In fact, it's the opposite. It's a backbone so better moves can be made. Types having unique options would be great instead of having their unique options turned into TMs.
I never went back and explained my take: the issue i have with the idea of making every type unique is that it makes for extremely boring pokemon. every type would just be the ice type, where only one archetype can have major success while the rest flounder (other than idk 600+ bst abominations but thats kinda for every type. they can do whatever they want). I want all archetypes to be viable with all types, because its fundamentally more interesting to have different pokemon use the type differently than going "its an ice type so its a fast attacker. its a steel type so its a wall. its a fire type so its a bulky attacker"
I feel less positive about the Paradoxes than probably most people. While the UBs had fairly unconventional designs, it feels like every Paradox is just "what if X Pokémon was a dinosaur/robot?". The only ones that reinvent the original concepts in a creative way imo are Slither Wing and Sandy Shocks since they have drastically different silhouettes.
I also dislike how they're implemented in-game. Like cool, there's this in-universe occult magazine where people share sightings of cryptids, but it would be even cooler if there NPCs in the actual world (in a game that prioritizes exploration and discovery) that you explore that share these rumors and give you hints to where to find these rare Pokémon rather than just dump them all in a late-game area.
Definitely no to this. For competitive, you really only need the high or top tier damage attacks to make things work.
Ingame though it is even worse. A whole lot of the fun can come from pokemon being pulled in different directions than their stat lines directly imply - using off attacking stats or relying on off type moves for a main damage dealing move for portions of the game can be really fun and a little less pure auto-pilot than usual. I'd much rather have a mon like say Vulpix / Ninetales use Wisp + Hex or Flare Blitz for portions of the game rather than purely just going down the Ember pipeline. (and that does, in practice, mean being exclusionary of the optimal stat aligned STABs at times, because otherwise those options may as well not exist for players not handicapping themselves)
I hate the idea of every type being relatively the same for the same reason I hate hit like Level Scaling.
At what point does the entire game start to feel the same outside of cosmetic differences. This shit matters to game feel. If my Fire Type and Bug Type feel essentially the same from a gameplay perspective, the texture of videogames, then everything starts to feel boring and stale.
Games should do more to make every bit of gameplay feel different, especially in their balance of different groups, not less. If your blorbo is bad because it doesn't have SpA Stone Edge, I don't care. That makes it more interesting.
At what point does the entire game start to feel the same outside of cosmetic differences. This shit matters to game feel. If my Fire Type and Bug Type feel essentially the same from a gameplay perspective, the texture of videogames, then everything starts to feel boring and stale.
Games should do more to make every bit of gameplay feel different, especially in their balance of different groups, not less. If your blorbo is bad because it doesn't have SpA Stone Edge, I don't care. That makes it more interesting.
I thought no but then I realized they were just talking about a mid-power accurate move and I was like yes. Otherwise no
But then the issue is inversely they're generically bad, or as Baku said, pretty type cast for type role, or wanting to copy the typecasting as they are inferior
Like the type chart heavily dictates what's early to mid game as well, it's already formulaic without accounting moves or viability. Similarly, a lot of the "Can I beat X game with crappy mon" challenges just boil down to "the AI is stupid" and "I overgrinded cuz my stats/moves suck"
The Paradox Mons, especially the future ones, are huge victims of having their appeal stuck in Scarlet and Violet. Not just meaning Gen 9 as a whole, but those specific games.
When people make comments disparaging the designs of the Quark Squad and they refer to images like these
Well, yeah, I see it. They look really, really lame. The silhouettes really are near identical, and the small extra robo-details are cool but don't really come into focus.
Instead, almost all of the appeal of these designs comes into play when they exist within a space. Their animations, textures, and lighting are what make them stand out. Iron Moth's segmented pieces mechanically moving in contrast to Volcarona's wing flutter is a detail that comes to mind in this case. Even considering the identical silhouettes, seeing the two in motion for just a second makes them instantly distinguishable.
The obvious issues with this is that Scarlet and Violet are simply not very polished in presentation, and that the individual Paradox Mons outside of the box art duo don't get any specific appearance that takes advantage of their design strengths. Even just one somewhat dark and quiet location where the dim color light and eeire mechanical hum could create an atmosphere of some kind would have gone miles towards making their appeal land - imagine if there was a part of the game with such a location that contained many future Paradox Mons, and they could only be identified by their bright segments, with some turned off in the dark such that you bump into a 'wall' and it suddenly flickers to life. That's the kind of thing that's really missing imo, not the designs themselves.
With the modern churning dev cycles, imagining is all I expect to do with this kind of thing.
When people make comments disparaging the designs of the Quark Squad and they refer to images like these
Well, yeah, I see it. They look really, really lame. The silhouettes really are near identical, and the small extra robo-details are cool but don't really come into focus.
Instead, almost all of the appeal of these designs comes into play when they exist within a space. Their animations, textures, and lighting are what make them stand out. Iron Moth's segmented pieces mechanically moving in contrast to Volcarona's wing flutter is a detail that comes to mind in this case. Even considering the identical silhouettes, seeing the two in motion for just a second makes them instantly distinguishable.
The obvious issues with this is that Scarlet and Violet are simply not very polished in presentation, and that the individual Paradox Mons outside of the box art duo don't get any specific appearance that takes advantage of their design strengths. Even just one somewhat dark and quiet location where the dim color light and eeire mechanical hum could create an atmosphere of some kind would have gone miles towards making their appeal land - imagine if there was a part of the game with such a location that contained many future Paradox Mons, and they could only be identified by their bright segments, with some turned off in the dark such that you bump into a 'wall' and it suddenly flickers to life. That's the kind of thing that's really missing imo, not the designs themselves.
With the modern churning dev cycles, imagining is all I expect to do with this kind of thing.
pokemon dont serve types, types serve pokemon. the baseline type having various tools doesnt mean that the pokemon itself needs to be able to access everything.
in this scenario, not all stab moves should be available to a pokemon, but rather the pokemon itself should be able to take something from its stab kit to work for its goals. a fast ice should take from the big boy attacks, not use as many ice utility. an ice wall should use ice defensive moves and ice utility, etc. but currently, all ice provides is big boy attacking, and ice utility/defense is left with crumbs, making the type one note and boring. hell, people keep making fun of gamefreak for making bulky ice walls, implying the correct course of action is that every ice type should be either weavile or baxcallibur. how boring
in this scenario, not all stab moves should be available to a pokemon, but rather the pokemon itself should be able to take something from its stab kit to work for its goals. a fast ice should take from the big boy attacks, not use as many ice utility. an ice wall should use ice defensive moves and ice utility, etc. but currently, all ice provides is big boy attacking, and ice utility/defense is left with crumbs, making the type one note and boring. hell, people keep making fun of gamefreak for making bulky ice walls, implying the correct course of action is that every ice type should be either weavile or baxcallibur. how boring
And honestly the type chart needs a rebalancing, but it can be chaotic. My joke hack went too far, but it was worth giving people migraines
I will never forgive GF for making Fairy resist Bug. The fact that the leaks show they were planning for it to be SE on Bug is even more attrocious
Sometimes, I think y'all didn't play the old games and had to deal with mons having to rely on Hidden Power for STAB.
Take Grass, for example, would you say that Sceptile and Roserade play like Ferrothorn and Meganium?
Blaziken and Incineroar can click Flare Blitz to hit things, but they damn sure don't play the same. However, they do have the option of attacking and actually doing damage unlike DP Luxray.
Options make games more interesting.
Wrong. Certain types already have reliable move pipelines.
Take Grass, for example, would you say that Sceptile and Roserade play like Ferrothorn and Meganium?
That's where the unique moves and strengths of each type and pokémon come in.
Blaziken and Incineroar can click Flare Blitz to hit things, but they damn sure don't play the same. However, they do have the option of attacking and actually doing damage unlike DP Luxray.
Options make games more interesting.
nope, thus all types should be like grass and have a very broad and expansive options of attacks, utility and defense profiles, to create more pokemon who play differently. glad we both agree on this!
And for that, they need viable damage options for early, mid, and late-game/comp!
Literally just look at how Scizor couldn't do anything before DPPt because it just didn't have anything to reliably hit the opponent with. The entire Bug-type was like this.
In the context of singleplayer?
Yea
You could interchangably use basically any Grass Type and it'd feel basically the exact fucking same to me, realistically. I'd see more difference between Exp. Growth Rate than "Do I click Giga Drain or Power Whip and am I faster or slower" to an enemy target weak to Grass
i dont see how this contradicts my desire for all types to have equal toolboxes (with different flavors. of course freeze is for ice types etc etc etc), because i do agree gamefreak has done a pretty ass job with mid game lately. theyve been too focused on end game competitive while pokemon will have 20 level gaps of having a single good move.
the type toolboxes should be similar in scale, but each pokemon should use it diffwrently BUT they should also... be useful in some way lmfao. including in early and mid game. of course you dont need to make as wide of a spread for the mid and early game, but entire removal of tools like signal beam getting cut is ?!?!?!?!?!?!!
This doesn't exist anymore I made like half an essay about how nowadays Game Freak just gives you a competitive moveset with coverage + setup moves + great STAB on basically everything now
Even a shitmon designed to be a shitmon like Oinkologne gets one of its best STAB moves in the game at Level 23
Yawn is nice, then a setup move, and then yeah it takes a while to get Double Edge but that's still not even really "endgame" imo.
Look at Ceruledge lol
Armarouge
Lokix
Garganacl
Kilowattrel
etc. etc.
Grafaiai
Toedscruel
Scovillain
etc. etc.
This is ofc without TMs, because a lot of the mons that don't have the best level up movesets have good TMs here. When you open up to TMs Oinkologne can learn more than the following: Trailblaze, Chilling Water, Facade, Bulldoze, Dig, Bullet Seed, Zen Headbutt, Body Slam, Seed Bomb, Stomping Tantrum, Body Press, Iron Head, Hyper Voice, Energy Ball, Play Rough, High Horsepower
It's oldmons
But that's the thing, it doesn't!
This is exactly what we were advocating for, good stab pipelines so mons can actually function during the entire game.
A'ight, bet. This is Gen 2 Exeggcute, does this feel like a Grass-type to you?
Btw, Giga Drain is post-game, and Solarbeam is after Clair. There's something to be said about modern learnsets needing some flavor, but let's be real here, advocating for mons to not have viable attack options is bewildering.
A lot of pokemon don't have that high/top tier damage, which is a bad thing that this would fix. There's also a lot of pokemon with no proper early or mid game options, resulting in long time periods where a pokemon is stuck with no stab options or extremely weak stab options. Both of these are issues pokemon shouldn't have to deal with, unless a pokemon isn't really designed to do much (if any) damage to begin with.
Saying this means Pokemon can't be unique as a result doesn't make any sense, there's still plenty of ways to make pokemon unique. This would make sure every pokemon can function, while still allowing for them to be unique. This wouldn't prevent Vulpix from using Will O Wisp and Hex, it could still learn both of those moves. It just would also be allowed to function as a Fire type too.
Also the stats themselves are giving pokemon unique ways to play. Making them unique by forcing them to play in a way they aren't designed to doesn't make any sense.
The types already play and feel different because of type matchups. Fire and Bug types will never feel like they play the same because Fire types can hit Steel types super effectively while Bug is resisted, Bug hits Dark super effectively while Fire doesn't, etc. Types will never feel the same because type matchups will always give them different things. Not to mention some types being different in regards to how their type matchups are compared to others (Steel resisting a trillion things but not having many offensive advantages, Ground having an insane amount of offensive strengths but having to deal with much more immunities than any other type as a result, Grass having much more resistences to deal with but hitting two really good types (one of which is hard to hit super effectively) super effectively giving it a great niche, etc). Not to mention there's still the rest of the moveset, which would have a bunch of more unique stab options, support options, setup options, coverage options, etc which would keep them feeling different.
Blorbo doesn't necessarily need SpA Stone Edge, he needs something that fulfills the same role of a strong special attack. And even if it was SpA Stone Edge, I think it's far more interesting to have the option of either Blorbo or Blurba instead of Blurba just being a better version of Blorbo, and Blorbo not being able to function properly and therefore just being the worse option because everyone would rather just go with Blurba instead. Having more good options is far more interesting than having two options where one is just significently better and the other doesn't work properly.
Gen 3-7 Seedot: Absolute suffering, TMs are its only hope, straight up 0 stab or even DIRECT ATTACKING for most of its leveling besides crap Nature Power
Gen 8+ Seedot: Let's goooooo, Dark type stab for Nuzleaf on, actual early game options
We went from uniquely shit to uniquely a grass dark mixed attacker
Gen 8+ Seedot: Let's goooooo, Dark type stab for Nuzleaf on, actual early game options
We went from uniquely shit to uniquely a grass dark mixed attacker
imagine getting stab moves, couldnt be me (the zubat experience)
I think its funny that even in modern gens zubat doesn't get stab moves that early