Unpopular opinions

Pikachu315111

Ranting & Raving!
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Or even Ice Path
I decided against Ice Path since its at the end of the game. I picked Whirl Islands as you can visit them as soon as you can Surf... and then I remembered you also need Whirlpool which you don't get until the end of the game. :facepalm:

So instead I think the Icy Rock could have gone in Union Cave. If Union Cave is cold enough for a Lapras, it's cold enough for the Icy Rock.

Or perhaps they genuinely thought it was no big deal. Game Freak being Game Freak, I wouldn't be surprised.
Well here's the video of the Treehouse where the announcement was made (I started it at 25:39 as I feel the build-up to the announcement is important).
Leaving alone they left this announcement for the very last part of the Treehouse, it could just be me reading too much into this but I feel there's a shift in tone compared to the earlier parts of the video. While there they sounded more excited and relaxed, here it feels serious and more tense. In addition, before its said, they front load it with how they make careful decisions about what Pokemon they choose based on the region as well as battle balance (yes, they indeed used battle balance as an excuse). This wasn't just an announcement they were making, they KNEW they were delivering bad news.

Now they WANTED it to be treated like it was no big deal. "Ho hum, I hoped you liked all the exciting new features coming with Sword & Shield! Oh, one last little tiny thing, SwSh will be compatible with HOME and you can transfer your Pokemon in Bank to HOME and then SwSh as long as they're in the Galar dex". *Commentator asks about sending Shiny Pokemon caught to GO into SwSh* "Uh, yes, Pokemon in GO can be sent to HOME and into SwSh as long as they're in the Galar dex... BYE!". However, it was treated like anything BUT no big deal.

In either cases, I sure hope whoever came up with the idea to do that got fired since then. :blobshrug:
No, Masuda is still working there. An before you ask, no, there's obviously nothing saying whose idea was it to announce it that way, but I wouldn't be surprised if after the decision was made Masuda went "I'm more familiar with the fanbase, I'll announce it at the end the Treehouse, I'll make it clear why we did so and there should be little backlash".

That I wouldn't be shocked if they treat Dexit as if they were rotating cards.
Eh, not the same thing. The TCG doesn't select what cards from every set is still viable and occasionally switching things up. What happens with the TCG, much like with others, is that there comes a point where an old set just becomes outdated and so that entire set is no longer allowed. The reason for this is a logical one: once they move onto a new TCG set they stop printing the previous one, meaning all those cards are now out of print and as the years go on & more sets are introduced those older cards are harder to get. Thus, at some point the set is retired so that new players who want to get into the competitive scene don't have to worry about not having & facing against these batch of really good cards from a very old out of print set.

What Pokemon are in and not in a Regional Dex is all at the whims of GameFreak what they feel fits the region for whatever reason.

Dexit probably will never go away
I don't think anyone was suggesting it would, at least not anymore. And a Restricted Dex can be a valuable tool, if only GF would use it as such.

I would more or less expect that either with SV or with SV + the next gen 9 game, the entire dex will be available in "some" switch game.
I would be surprised, no, disappointed if all the remaining Pokemon that are still waiting aren't put into SV. I shouldn't be surprised because it's such an obvious thing... but GF have shown them and obvious get along as well as Zangoose and Seviper.

(I'll let you decide who-is-what and the metaphor that entails)
 
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No, Masuda is still working there. An before you ask, no, there's obviously nothing saying whose idea was it to announce it that way, but I wouldn't be surprised if after the decision was made Masuda went "I'm more familiar with the fanbase, I'll announce it at the end the Treehouse, I'll make it clear why we did so and there should be little backlash".
The only reason for which I didn't specify Masuda is because I'm not convinced it was Masuda's idea in first place.

Call it (appropriately) unpopular opinion if you want, but I think people demonize him too much.

I rather feel that since they know he's the "face" of GameFreaks, whoever writes the PR makes him do all the talking. For good or bad.
Which basically turns him into the strawman that everyone hates, even though we don't actually know if it's him that took that (and other) decision or not. Not that he'd have any other option, if they tell him to say that, he says that.
Nintendo / TPCI wouldn't exactly be the first company to have a dedicated strawman to do all the (potentially) unpopular announcements and take all the hate on themselves. Es back in the days, I used to actually knew one of the guys that handled a lot of the Blizzard unpopular shit (used to go by the name Lore), and he also was in a similar situation once he got hired by them, where they'd "write" what he would have to say, and there wasn't a "no" option, you do it or get fired.

(Which, doesn't mean it can't be Masuda taking these PR decisions eh. I just say we don't know if that was actually his decision or not.)

p.s. I may be really really heavy on COPIUM, but I want to believe that at least some of GF heads arent THAT disconnected from the fanbase. I want to believe it's a problem of "the franchise grew too big for its own good and the TPCI leadership has no idea of what goes on at the bottom". Let me try to be optmistic ok :(
 
The only reason for which I didn't specify Masuda is because I'm not convinced it was Masuda's idea in first place.

Call it (appropriately) unpopular opinion if you want, but I think people demonize him too much.

I rather feel that since they know he's the "face" of GameFreaks, whoever writes the PR makes him do all the talking. For good or bad.
Which basically turns him into the strawman that everyone hates, even though we don't actually know if it's him that took that (and other) decision or not. Not that he'd have any other option, if they tell him to say that, he says that.
Nintendo / TPCI wouldn't exactly be the first company to have a dedicated strawman to do all the (potentially) unpopular announcements and take all the hate on themselves. Es back in the days, I used to actually knew one of the guys that handled a lot of the Blizzard unpopular shit (used to go by the name Lore), and he also was in a similar situation once he got hired by them, where they'd "write" what he would have to say, and there wasn't a "no" option, you do it or get fired.

(Which, doesn't mean it can't be Masuda taking these PR decisions eh. I just say we don't know if that was actually his decision or not.)

p.s. I may be really really heavy on COPIUM, but I want to believe that at least some of GF heads arent THAT disconnected from the fanbase. I want to believe it's a problem of "the franchise grew too big for its own good and the TPCI leadership has no idea of what goes on at the bottom". Let me try to be optmistic ok :(
Masuda became Sonic's Iizuka honestly
 
Was this the thread where I said I'd make a Venn diagram about the difference between generations and regions? I can't remember, so if any staff are reading, feel free to move this to the correct thread. Whatever the case, here it is:
Game Freak outright said that they don't internally divide games by generation, this is especially apparent post-dexit. Every new game since Let's Go has its own Origin symbol and a completely different lineup of Pokemon/forms that were available. They use the term "generation" in some specs of games, but the word is not used in the same way fans use it. For example, BDSP and Legends are both considered their own separate "generations" from Sword and Shield(yes, plural, BDSP and Legend are considered separate as well).
 
Speaking of this divide, on the subject of Home's decision to rewrite movesets upon a Pokemon transferring to a new game: I honestly think this is probably going to be a good thing overall. As Hematite explained it on Discord, Game Freak has clearly attempted to strike certain moves from learn-sets but transferring Pokemon means that could never really stick besides the Gen 2 to 3 transition; this is mainly an issue in-cart where younger players won't have access to these specific combinations and therefore may be at an inherent disadvantage. With this change, the greater control over learn-set would remove this potential player imbalance while also offering more room to diversify certain Pokemon, and that latter sentiment is one I can get behind. Granted, this system definitely needs improvement over how BDSP handled things, where certain mons got their movepools gutted for no reason. I also hope they only replace removed moves since otherwise players who do want to transfer mons may be stuck having to reteach a mon certain moves each transfer, which sounds annoying and might just discourage transferring altogether for some players.

But as for restricting moves in the future, I have one definite request: Scald. I have grown to have several issues with Scald from a game design standpoint, and a large part of that dislike is how much distribution it gets. Other than dual Ice types and weird cases like Pyukumuku and Rotom, basically every Water type gets Scald, and no Pokemon that gets Scald has ever had it removed from its in-game learnset (if you could learn it by TM in Gen 5, you can still learn it in the latest gen you appear it). On top of making things less interesting imo since every Water not hyper-fixated on physical attacks can slot it in, this high distribution of Scald also exacerbates issues such as how mindlessly spammable the move is in most games (since there's often no real downside to clicking the move) and how Surf, which should be Water's Flamethrower/Thunderbolt/Ice Beam equivalent, is wholly inferior to Scald because it has no secondary effect and thus sees no usage. If Toxic or Knock Off warrant getting restricted, then Scald definitely does.

And I do feel this particular restriction would make the competitive scene of Gen 9 more interesting. We can already see this with Slowbro, which often drops Scald for options like Ice Beam and Body Press that better answer certain parts of the meta; I think it could be really interesting to see how Bro would keep developing if it couldn't fall back on Scald, and there's several other bulky Waters that have the potential to develop in interesting ways if they couldn't just spam burns. Basically Scald is stupid and the meta would honestly be better if less mons got it.
 
The real thing is that people still think this is going to be a permanent thing when in reality the only reason it's in place is cause otherwise transferring stuff from BDSP to LA to SwSh would be a major headache with constant moves removal / relearning due to moves not just "not learnable" but literally not present in the 3 games respectively.

It's really Legend Arceus status and stat redistribution all over again, when everyone was like "omg this will destroy the gameplay" without realizing there was a reason for certain changes *in that context* that do not carry over to other games.

SV will have the same movesets as SwSh.
 
The thing is, while I can see the intent... from a Game Freak standpoint, it's completely redundant. The Isle of Armor DLC introduced an NPC that makes Pokémon Ranked-legal in exchange of wiping out their learnset.

They could have just used that NPC from now on...
Eh, that just feeds into what I guess could be called "NPC bloat" or "service bloat", similar to the oft complained about item bloat. Gotta have an NPC who teaches Draco Meteor, gotta have an NPC who teaches Pledges, gotta have an NPC with a bottle cap collection who'll hyper train your mons, gotta have one or more NPCs who give out legendary key items like the Reveal Glass, etcetera etcetera. So many services that have to be stuck somewhere in the region through increasingly contrived methods.
 
Imagine if Lava Plume had better distribution. It also has a 30% burn chance, but I saw someone point out on Freezai's video about Scald that Water and Ghost types are better at inflicting burns nowadays.
The issue with Scald isn't distribution(though the fact that it's on everything doesn't help). The problem is, there's 3 things you can switch into Surf: Grass, Water, or Dragon. None of those 3 want to be burned, as a general rule. The only things that are immune to burn are Fire-types, which die to Scald. Lava Plume is fine, you probably have a Flamethrower/Fire Blast/Sacred Fire switch-in, and that can take Lava Plume as well. It's like Discharge, it's theoretically annoying, but since you're already switching in a ground because you expect Volt Switch, the para chance on Discharge is irrelevant. Scald hits everything Water(already a good type) can hit AND hits the things that resist it with an annoying status. Mono-attack builds like CroCune should be a risky play, not the primary build for most of the mons of a type for multiple generations.
 
The only reason for which I didn't specify Masuda is because I'm not convinced it was Masuda's idea in first place.

Call it (appropriately) unpopular opinion if you want, but I think people demonize him too much.

I rather feel that since they know he's the "face" of GameFreaks, whoever writes the PR makes him do all the talking. For good or bad.
Which basically turns him into the strawman that everyone hates, even though we don't actually know if it's him that took that (and other) decision or not. Not that he'd have any other option, if they tell him to say that, he says that.
Nintendo / TPCI wouldn't exactly be the first company to have a dedicated strawman to do all the (potentially) unpopular announcements and take all the hate on themselves. Es back in the days, I used to actually knew one of the guys that handled a lot of the Blizzard unpopular shit (used to go by the name Lore), and he also was in a similar situation once he got hired by them, where they'd "write" what he would have to say, and there wasn't a "no" option, you do it or get fired.

(Which, doesn't mean it can't be Masuda taking these PR decisions eh. I just say we don't know if that was actually his decision or not.)

p.s. I may be really really heavy on COPIUM, but I want to believe that at least some of GF heads arent THAT disconnected from the fanbase. I want to believe it's a problem of "the franchise grew too big for its own good and the TPCI leadership has no idea of what goes on at the bottom". Let me try to be optmistic ok :(
This is a misconception. Masuda is on GameFreak's Board of Directors (up until yesterday), meaning the only person with direct power over him is the CEO, Tajiri.
 
This is a misconception. Masuda is on GameFreak's Board of Directors (up until yesterday), meaning the only person with direct power over him is the CEO, Tajiri.
The presence of even a single person above him can still validate my theory you know :p
 
This is a misconception. Masuda is on GameFreak's Board of Directors (up until yesterday), meaning the only person with direct power over him is the CEO, Tajiri.
And now that he's been moved to TPC Tajiri might even answer to him when it comes to the franchise.
 
Even ignoring how unbalanced Scald is (which is a pretty hard ask, but that's beside the point), it just doesn't make any sense from a flavor perspective how every Water type learns it, either. How, exactly, are most water types producing the heat necessary to spray boiling water? Scald just feels very poorly considered, both in terms of balance and how it fits into most Pokemon's movesets. Strictly from a flavor perspective (balance may warrant a few more Pokemon losing it), I'd restrict Scald to the following Water types:

  • Blastoise: The cannons on its back is sufficient justification to shoot boiling hot water, even if it doesn't learn any other moves associated with fire. Make it a pulse move for extra chaos in NatDex, because why the hell not?
  • Lapras: It's always had an oddly diverse movepool, and it's said to be highly intelligent; I'm sure it can figure how how to produce scalding water. This is probably the biggest stretch out of the entire list, but also consider that Lapras deserves it
  • Lanturn: The electricity it produces should be capable of heating up water.
  • Octillery: Its design draws from a tank, and it learns Fire Blast as is. Learning Scald is well within reason for it.
  • Simipour: Notably, this is one of the only Pokemon to naturally learn Scald by level-up, and it connects with their primarily associated trainers, the Striaton Trio, as chefs. The pattern on its chest also somewhat resembles a geyser, which is more than what most Water types can say.
  • Clawitzer: This little guy is based off pistol shrimp, which can produce water bubbles that can briefly reach temperatures of almost 4,800 degrees Celsius - and yes, this is a real animal, not an exaggerated Pokedex entry! I see no reason why it can't shoot scalding water.
  • Volcanion: duh.

    You could also make the argument for... pretty much anything that isn't Toxapex, which doesn't deserve it; a couple that come to mind are Inteleon and Gyarados. The point is more that Scald is too widely distributed, and taking a good hard look at what Pokemon can actually logically use the move and reducing it would be ultimately a good thing for the meta, as well.

 

didls

formerly Besom
Another move that bothers me is Stealth Rocks, which I’m sure isn’t an unpopular opinion. But idk why everyone makes such a big deal out of Safety Boots. They’re just a half-assed solution to a completely unnecessary and broken move that has no reason to exist. Yes, let’s force all of those INCREDIBLY broken Bug/Flying types to waste their item slots to protect against a move that makes them lose 50% of their health for switching in. I’m glad we don’t have Beautifly terrorizing the metagame anymore ♥

But instead, let’s ban the incredibly broken 30% accuracy, 8 PP OHKO moves that no one who actually cares about winning would ever use.
 
But instead, let’s ban the incredibly broken 30% accuracy, 8 PP OHKO moves that no one who actually cares about winning would ever use.
I am afraid you are mistaken here.

OHKO moves are actually legitimately used in VGC/BSS, expecially in BSS. "30% chance to win the game on the spot" is pretty strong, much more than people think it is.
It's unironically same as why smogon banned evasion, because turning a match into "30% chance to lose the match the spot with nothing you can do about it" is never fun.
 
  • Blastoise: The cannons on its back is sufficient justification to shoot boiling hot water, even if it doesn't learn any other moves associated with fire. Make it a pulse move for extra chaos in NatDex, because why the hell not?
  • Lapras: It's always had an oddly diverse movepool, and it's said to be highly intelligent; I'm sure it can figure how how to produce scalding water. This is probably the biggest stretch out of the entire list, but also consider that Lapras deserves it
  • Lanturn: The electricity it produces should be capable of heating up water.
  • Octillery: Its design draws from a tank, and it learns Fire Blast as is. Learning Scald is well within reason for it.
  • Simipour: Notably, this is one of the only Pokemon to naturally learn Scald by level-up, and it connects with their primarily associated trainers, the Striaton Trio, as chefs. The pattern on its chest also somewhat resembles a geyser, which is more than what most Water types can say.
  • Clawitzer: This little guy is based off pistol shrimp, which can produce water bubbles that can briefly reach temperatures of almost 4,800 degrees Celsius - and yes, this is a real animal, not an exaggerated Pokedex entry! I see no reason why it can't shoot scalding water.
  • Volcanion: duh.
It's kind of weird to suggest Lapras given that it is one of the few Water-types that currently doesn't get Scald when fully evolved, probably because of the thematic clash with the Ice typing. The Kingdra line is also a good candidate because it has a cannon-like mouth and several "shooting" attacks such as Flash Cannon which it shares with Blastoise, Octillery, and Clawitzer.
 
Main series Pokémon games which come in pairs can generally be divided in two categories: one version of the pair is "red" and the other is "blue". For most of the game pairs, it is quite clear which is red and which is blue. But it is not quite that clear for B/W. From what I have seen in the fandom, most people seem to consider Black as red and White as blue. But I personally prefer to see it the other way around, Black as blue and White as red. I think this is unpopular since I don't think I have seen anyone else seeing it the same way. There are two reasons for as for why I see it this way. The first is that there is actually a very minor detail on the game covers which features red and blue: Reshiram has blue eyes, while Zekrom has red eyes. I also think it makes more sense to see it this way because of the sequels. Black 2 is definitely blue while White 2 is definitely red.
 
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Even ignoring how unbalanced Scald is (which is a pretty hard ask, but that's beside the point), it just doesn't make any sense from a flavor perspective how every Water type learns it, either. How, exactly, are most water types producing the heat necessary to spray boiling water? Scald just feels very poorly considered, both in terms of balance and how it fits into most Pokemon's movesets. Strictly from a flavor perspective (balance may warrant a few more Pokemon losing it), I'd restrict Scald to the following Water types:

  • Blastoise: The cannons on its back is sufficient justification to shoot boiling hot water, even if it doesn't learn any other moves associated with fire. Make it a pulse move for extra chaos in NatDex, because why the hell not?
  • Lapras: It's always had an oddly diverse movepool, and it's said to be highly intelligent; I'm sure it can figure how how to produce scalding water. This is probably the biggest stretch out of the entire list, but also consider that Lapras deserves it
  • Lanturn: The electricity it produces should be capable of heating up water.
  • Octillery: Its design draws from a tank, and it learns Fire Blast as is. Learning Scald is well within reason for it.
  • Simipour: Notably, this is one of the only Pokemon to naturally learn Scald by level-up, and it connects with their primarily associated trainers, the Striaton Trio, as chefs. The pattern on its chest also somewhat resembles a geyser, which is more than what most Water types can say.
  • Clawitzer: This little guy is based off pistol shrimp, which can produce water bubbles that can briefly reach temperatures of almost 4,800 degrees Celsius - and yes, this is a real animal, not an exaggerated Pokedex entry! I see no reason why it can't shoot scalding water.
  • Volcanion: duh.

    You could also make the argument for... pretty much anything that isn't Toxapex, which doesn't deserve it; a couple that come to mind are Inteleon and Gyarados. The point is more that Scald is too widely distributed, and taking a good hard look at what Pokemon can actually logically use the move and reducing it would be ultimately a good thing for the meta, as well.
I don't think Scald is too unbalanced anymore since the burn nerf in gen 7. Compared to before, the chip damage from Burn isn't as big of a hindrance as it once was and whether the attack drop is bad or not is situational compared to Paralysis or Poison, where the chance of being fully paralyzed and the extra chip damage from poison will always have utility. Some pokemon like dragapult might actually want to get burned since then they can't get paralyzed or poisoned.

IMO the unbalanced move is Hydro Pump and not in a good way. If you crunch the numbers, the move only has around 88 BP on average, which is worse than Surf. Combined w/ the lower pp and surf is pretty much always the better move.
 
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Pikachu315111

Ranting & Raving!
is a Community Contributoris a Top Smogon Media Contributor
Main series Pokémon games which come in pairs can generally be divided in two categories: one version of the pair is "red" and the other is "blue". For most of the game pairs, it is quite clear which is red and which is blue. But it is not quite that clear for B/W. From what I have seen in the fandom, most people seem to consider Black as red and White as blue. But I personally prefer to see it the other way around, Black as blue and White as red. I think this is unpopular since I don't think I have seen anyone else seeing it the same way. There are two reasons for as for why I see it this way. The first is that there is actually a very minor detail on the game covers which features red and blue: Reshiram has blue eyes, while Zekrom has red eyes. I also think it makes more sense to see it this way because of the sequels. Black 2 is definitely blue while White 2 is definitely red.
While I don't think it really matters, if you want to label the games as the "Red Version" and "Blue Version" you could use the recent Legendary Hunts which has the mascots be version exclusives:

ORAS:
OR:
Ho-Oh, Groudon, Palkia, Reshiram
AS: Lugia, Kyogre, Dialga, Zekrom

USUM:
US:
Ho-Oh, Groudon, Dialga, Reshiram, Xerneas, Solgaleo
UM: Lugia, Kyogre, Palkia, Zekrom, Yveltal, Lunala

SwSd:
Sw:
Ho-Oh, Groudon, Dialga, Reshiram, Xerneas, Solgaleo, Zacian
Sd: Lugia, Kyogre, Palkia, Zekrom, Yveltal, Lunala, Zamazenta

BONUS: In Pokemon Battle Revolution, the final boss Mysterial would use different Pokemon depending on the game cartridge you have linked:
Diamond/SoulSilver: Lugia, Kyogre, Palkia
Pearl/HeartGold: Ho-Oh, Groudon, Dialga

Going by these, and counting out the exceptions, we come to the non-surprising pattern that "Red Version" and "Blue Version" usually follows the "Version 1" and "Version 2" template:

Red/Version 1: Gold, Ruby, Diamond, Black, X, Sun, Sword
Blue/Version 2: Silver, Sapphire, Pearl, White, Y, Moon, Shield

But there are exceptions which are worth a quick look at:

ORAS-Palkia/Dialga: The first Legendary Hunt, I guess it shouldn't be too surprising there would be an exception as they were figuring things out. So, why Palkia in Omega Ruby and Dialga in Alpha Sapphire? I'm wondering if they were maybe more trying to match Legendary by not Version 1 & 2 but by colors? Omega Ruby's Legendaries were "lighter/warmer" colors: orange, red, pink, & white; Alpha Sapphire's were "darker/cooler" colors: blues & black. when you lined them up they all nicely went together.
Mysterial Teams: Now the interesting thing is that the Pokemon all do match-up with their Version number and whichever Gen II remake is linked, but it's the actual Gen IV version which is switched. I can only guess that they wanted to throw the opposite version Gen IV Pokemon at the player as they would likely be using at least the native caught Legendary. As for why they didn't do this for the Gen II remakes, remember that though we associated the Tower Duos with a specific version you can still catch both of them in the game, they didn't start doing version exclusive Legendaries until Gen III. And, if you're wondering, Platinum just uses the Diamond/SoulSilver team (my guess is that they only programmed the Diamond & Pearl teams and, to make Platinum and HGSS compatible, when linked to Battle Revolution Platinum & SS is programmed to have an id of a Diamond game and HG as a Pearl game).
 

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