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Unpopular opinions

unpopular opinion: fakemon are unappealing at the base of itself conceptually

I'm not one to think Game Freak has the best designs, because they don't, but the point is that they are official Pokemon. And that immediately makes me care about something 10x more. Being official does give something more merits.

how am I supposed to give a shit about a fakemon fangame when I can't talk to other random pokemon fans about how cool it is, or my headcanon about it, and trade them that Pokemon, or use it in competitive play

yungoos may not be peak but it will have more worth to me than even a 10/10, best fakemon design ever to me, because I can actually do what Pokemon is about: socialize

if pokemon was just a singleplayer RPG it'd be so much more mid, and if it was just a niche topic, I'd never get as invested into it, period. Keeping myself up to date with hundreds of new creatures and I can't even say on the internet "x mon is super cute I love it" because no one will know what I'm even talking about? immediate turn off to me

I think the biggest strength of creature collection is social activity, and fakemon as a concept is pretty impossible to get off the ground in that way. Even with a singleplayer game like Legends Arceus, because it's official Pokemon and it's one of the largest franchises ever, I can talk for literal hours and get external entertainment just talking about the Pokemon. Let alone the shit ton of fanart and other things that will inevitably come.

(btw this isn't about fakemon ideas that are say, evolutions, this is more about say "hey here is our own dex", because I think fan speculation on forms/evolutions can make for pretty interesting stuff at times, and make for funny dynamics like me being very into the dunsparce evo [i thought the idea of it becoming a dragon was dumb], and people who were unironically mad about it)

btw I have similar thoughts about other games in the genre in general. I think being popular is a naturally required thing for a good game focused on creature collection, which is why I don't think Pokemon will ever have serious competition. Because Pokemon is one of the most rewarding franchises socially to know shit about, while the hundreds of hours I put into playing Temtem has maybe led to three conversations where people told me they didn't care about the designs as much as Pokemon. which, fair
 
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Hugin said:
There's my other unpopular opinion:
I don't think gyms need to be difficult. I DO think they should be designed to make you engage with various elements of the game. I'm on record as saying we should have a Dragon-gym as the first or second gym at some point, to tell the player "you can't just steamroll with your starter and nothing else." I think an Electric gym making ground-types near-mandatory is a good idea, as along as it comes AFTER the player has a bunch of opportunities to catch ground-types rather than before(Clemont vs Wattson). Give us a game where 1 Gym uses their own setup mons(Norman's gym trainers are a treat), another uses screens, etc. Make the player engage with the mechanics of the game in some way other than SE move goes BRRR. A 6-mon starting gym is a nightmare for casual players, leave that for gyms 5-8. But a starting gym that says "you're gonna learn something today" is a good design choice. Take players and lead them through the various elements of the game that they otherwise won't even know exist.
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Tbh I feel like having gyms actually use mechanics like the ones you mentioned would automatically make them tougher then they currently are just by virtue of there being something happening. Like a Fire gym using Drought/Sunny day would cripple a players water types forcing them to make a new strategy that isn’t just spam surf/water pulse/etc and win.

Though personally I do feel like almost all gyms could stand to bring in an extra Mon or two. The eighth gym leader should not have the same amount of Mons as the second gym; like at least 5 at the most.
 
MoonlightRose said:
When they were changing up the type chart in gen 6 they should have gone further.
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Yesnt.

Tampering with the type chart is a pretty bad plan in general due to breaking continuity.

The only time they've actually changed the type chart has been when they felt the need to nerf a specific type, and that's been via either
- Adding a new type that interacts with it (Gen 2 adding Steel/Dark to nerf Psychic, Gen 6 adding Fairies to nerf Dragons and Fighting types)
- Modifying a interaction (Gen 2 changing Fire to resist Ice, Gen 6 nerfing Steel to not resist Dark/Ghost anymore)

I doubt gen 2 was intentionally to "nerf psychic" per se as gen 1 did not really have a competitive scene (and regardless the only types that interacted with Psychic in a meaningful way either did not really have users or were bugged in first place), and rather they probably wanted to add new types + figured fire should resist ice for logic reasons.

This leaves gen 6 as the only time where they intentionally tampered with the type chart for balance reasons, reasonably so considering that the previous generation VGC had a massive influx of very strong Dragon types.

As of now, despite what people would say, there isn't really a "op" type. People generally blame the fairy type for being OP, but as I've been advocating for ages, the issue is not the fairy type, but the fact they kept making insanely strong and optimized fairy types (see Xerneas, the Tapus, Zacian). Case in point, current generation only has 1 relevant fairy type in VGC, and a handful in smogon singles, all of which basically featuring minmaxed traits (Flutter Mane in VGC, Iron Valiant / Enamorous in smogon). You don't hear people complaining of how busted Dachsbun or Tinkaton are do you. Heck the 2 most busted pokemon currently in Ubers are Dragon types, one of which 4x weak to fairy if it doesn't terastalize.
Even Steel is still a insanely good defensive type but it's balanced out by being basically worthless as offensive type (moreso without any relevant fairy) and the only reason to ever have a steel move in VGC is to nuke Flutter Mane out of existance with Heavy Slam, while also sporting a dangerous Fighting weakness in metagames infested by actually strong fighting and fire types (cough cough Urshifu and Ogerbonk).
And lo and behold, Ice types suddently don't suck now that there's actually good ice types in the pool, since unsurprisingly stab ice attacks are actually good when they actually design glass cannon ice types and not Avalugg.

TLDR: I don't think there's any need to change the type chart. People are just too biased to just blame the typing rather than the minmax of a typing.
 
Worldie said:
Yesnt.

Tampering with the type chart is a pretty bad plan in general due to breaking continuity.

The only time they've actually changed the type chart has been when they felt the need to nerf a specific type, and that's been via either
- Adding a new type that interacts with it (Gen 2 adding Steel/Dark to nerf Psychic, Gen 6 adding Fairies to nerf Dragons and Fighting types)
- Modifying a interaction (Gen 2 changing Fire to resist Ice, Gen 6 nerfing Steel to not resist Dark/Ghost anymore)

I doubt gen 2 was intentionally to "nerf psychic" per se as gen 1 did not really have a competitive scene (and regardless the only types that interacted with Psychic in a meaningful way either did not really have users or were bugged in first place), and rather they probably wanted to add new types + figured fire should resist ice for logic reasons.

This leaves gen 6 as the only time where they intentionally tampered with the type chart for balance reasons, reasonably so considering that the previous generation VGC had a massive influx of very strong Dragon types.

As of now, despite what people would say, there isn't really a "op" type. People generally blame the fairy type for being OP, but as I've been advocating for ages, the issue is not the fairy type, but the fact they kept making insanely strong and optimized fairy types (see Xerneas, the Tapus, Zacian). Case in point, current generation only has 1 relevant fairy type in VGC, and a handful in smogon singles, all of which basically featuring minmaxed traits (Flutter Mane in VGC, Iron Valiant / Enamorous in smogon). You don't hear people complaining of how busted Dachsbun or Tinkaton are do you. Heck the 2 most busted pokemon currently in Ubers are Dragon types, one of which 4x weak to fairy if it doesn't terastalize.
Even Steel is still a insanely good defensive type but it's balanced out by being basically worthless as offensive type (moreso without any relevant fairy) and the only reason to ever have a steel move in VGC is to nuke Flutter Mane out of existance with Heavy Slam, while also sporting a dangerous Fighting weakness in metagames infested by actually strong fighting and fire types (cough cough Urshifu and Ogerbonk).
And lo and behold, Ice types suddently don't suck now that there's actually good ice types in the pool, since unsurprisingly stab ice attacks are actually good when they actually design glass cannon ice types and not Avalugg.

TLDR: I don't think there's any need to change the type chart. People are just too biased to just blame the typing rather than the minmax of a typing.
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The problem is that the damage is already done at this rate, plus the types, even if not “OP”, can make or break a Pokémon’s concept and stat distribution without an Ability to back it up. It is true that Koraidon and Miraidon are examples of blatantly overpowered Dragon-type, even by Legendary standard, but Miraidon’s Electric-type complementing their Ability and Koraidon’s Dragon / Fighting type appreciating the Fire-type boost via Orichalcum Pulse summoning the sun are examples of making advantage of their types further than they should.

A Fairy-type turning into a Bug-type have more impact than you would think. Sure, it’s no big deal if the other type is Steel so Magearna and Gen 8 Crowned Zacian can’t be any weaker, but if Flutter Mane is akin to Ghost / Bug, it would be much less unbearable since Bug is a much less powerful Bug STAB.

The Fairy-type itself isn’t overpowered, sure, but it is still among the best due to Steel and Poison aren’t common offensive type to begin with, and thus rears it’s ugly head when combined with another great defensive typing like Water or especially Steel. It straddles the fine line between “Top tier but not OP” to “Obnoxiously OP” because of such defensive perks.

Another issue with the current type chart is that Ice-type as-is would only allow fast Ice Pokémon to work, which means if we want them to work, we have to make them fast and hard-hitting, which can get monotonous fast. Snow giving a Defense boost to Ice-type Pokémon isn’t enough to give viability to slower, bulkier Ice-type; it just makes faster and hard-hitting Ice-type Pokémon and Slush Rushers even better than before.

Rock also suffered a similar issue to Ice, even if nowhere as bad. Sandstorm doesn’t make slow, bulky Rock-type Pokémon not named Tyranitar more viable, because Rock just happened to have so many weaknesses despite many older and newer Pokémon being built as slow, tanky Pokémon. Only Garganacl managed to get away due to Terastalization, Salt Cure and great Defense alongside good Special Defense and no double weaknesses. One argue that it’s a slow, sturdy Rock-type done right since Tyranitar, but it’s more of a case of blatant minmaxing with Salt Cure AND Purifying Salt at work.

There’s reason why many fans aren’t willing to give a chance to a new type since the sixth generations, as the issues are still there, and it’s that the minmaxed Pokémon of the more viable types just make this issue even more problematic, not less. If anything, it can cause an even bigger contradiction if a new type is introduced right after Gen IX.

tl;dr The type chart have it’s flaws that is as big of a fault as the blatant minmaxing. A new type can wait.
 
Pokemon is better with centralizing types, middling types, and way worse types. Having better and worse types isn't a bug(hah), it's a feature.

Makes the game more interesting, makes competitive better (a theoretically way more "neutral" type chart is a lot harder to prepare for), and ultimately I don't want them to focus on changing it for balance.

You may use Bug Type as an example of the type chart being bad, but Bug Type being weaker also makes it an underdog type and something that people root for, and pay more attention to. It makes conversations more interesting, and shapes the chart in ways that aren't there on paper. If Bug was just a middling to high type, it'd be less popular to a lot of fans. It also serves to make the Bug Types that succeed more interesting, and the type I see people most interested to see get good Pokemon is Bug.

Type chart is more than just on paper. And having better and weaker types is a good thing, even to a drastic degree.
 
My evil ass:
types.png

(Rip Skarmory, and partially Rip grass types)
 
In addition to the chart interactions stat spreads of a type, I think that particularly notable moves also play a factor. For Bug, there's a solid argument that the likes of U-Turn, First Impression, Quiver Dance, and/or Sticky Web would be unreasonable if given to a type that isn't offensively bad.

However, I do think that Fairy's interactions are still a bit half-baked. As the 'balance shakeup' type, it's designed to completely block the then-best offensive type and be weak to types that are seldom used offensively, but the existence of offensive Poison and Steel options to actually hit that weakness is still lagging behind (nevermind the amount of times it's poison/fighting vs fairy/psychic).

As a minor tangent to the above, I'm slightly disappointed that Salt Cure doesn't hit Fairy types for 25%, since it seems like it would work from both a mechanics (the move targets the other two best defensive types) and flavour (for the same reason Purifying Salt confers a Ghost resistance) perspective.
 
Ice should be super-effective against rock and both types are fine in their interactions the problem is that they are oriented offensively but the pokémon receive defensive stats with low speed. Fairy shouldn't be immune to dragon and resist bug because dragon as a type was never OP but its pokémon had in general high stats so of course many of them would become good competitively.
 
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Blue glass said:
Fairy shouldn't be immune to dragon and resist bug because dragon as a type was never OP
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1. In Generation 5 OU, some Dragon-Types were literally using only one Attacking move: Outrage, and succeeding.

You had sets like Outrage, Dragon Dance, Roost, Substitute, succeed and sweeping great teams. That's insane. No coverage necessary. Ferrothorn? Not a problem, it will break through eventually. That's absurd.

Dragon-Types were also absurd in Doubles and the only reason they weren't spammed even more was because Physical Dragon STAB isn't very good in Doubles.

Defensively, Dragon resists the entire 4 Basic Types (Grass, Fire, Water and Electric), and is only weak to two: Ice and Dragon. Dragon being, you know, the type we are talking about; and Ice-Type being a rarer type to be viable, especially in Doubles, which matters more than Singles.

It was also one of the best neutral defensive typings in the game. You wanna blame it on stats? Fucking Altaria was a good Dragon Dance sweeper in DPP UU.

Dragon-Type was objectively busted. Like, insanely so. DragMag was literally a thing, being able to remove the one or two Steels on a team, the only thing stopping the Dragons from basically picking up a KO every time they attacked, was viable. Stacking 3+ Dragons on a team was viable!

2. Fairy resisting Bug makes sense because in a lot of folklore, fairies control bugs and creatures of lower dominion. It's a lot more fair to say Fairy shouldn't resist Bug than your prior statement though.
 
*makes Ice immune to Dragon, Steel SE on Dragon*
*Makes new well not after Gen 9 Snow weather where it slows down water and dragon, buffs Ice speed*
Never understood why Steel wasn't SE on dragon
 
Sonikku A said:
Never understood why Steel wasn't SE on dragon
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Why would it be, if anything it should be the opposite, as Dragons have hardly ever had any problem dealing with armored knights (in fact, since most dragons know fire moves, dragons rarely struggled with steel types as far as just "hitting supereffectively", it's always just been rather a issue of practical 4MSS in competitive)
 
Worldie said:
Yesnt.

Tampering with the type chart is a pretty bad plan in general due to breaking continuity.

The only time they've actually changed the type chart has been when they felt the need to nerf a specific type, and that's been via either
- Adding a new type that interacts with it (Gen 2 adding Steel/Dark to nerf Psychic, Gen 6 adding Fairies to nerf Dragons and Fighting types)
- Modifying a interaction (Gen 2 changing Fire to resist Ice, Gen 6 nerfing Steel to not resist Dark/Ghost anymore)

I doubt gen 2 was intentionally to "nerf psychic" per se as gen 1 did not really have a competitive scene (and regardless the only types that interacted with Psychic in a meaningful way either did not really have users or were bugged in first place), and rather they probably wanted to add new types + figured fire should resist ice for logic reasons.

This leaves gen 6 as the only time where they intentionally tampered with the type chart for balance reasons, reasonably so considering that the previous generation VGC had a massive influx of very strong Dragon types.

As of now, despite what people would say, there isn't really a "op" type. People generally blame the fairy type for being OP, but as I've been advocating for ages, the issue is not the fairy type, but the fact they kept making insanely strong and optimized fairy types (see Xerneas, the Tapus, Zacian). Case in point, current generation only has 1 relevant fairy type in VGC, and a handful in smogon singles, all of which basically featuring minmaxed traits (Flutter Mane in VGC, Iron Valiant / Enamorous in smogon). You don't hear people complaining of how busted Dachsbun or Tinkaton are do you. Heck the 2 most busted pokemon currently in Ubers are Dragon types, one of which 4x weak to fairy if it doesn't terastalize.
Even Steel is still a insanely good defensive type but it's balanced out by being basically worthless as offensive type (moreso without any relevant fairy) and the only reason to ever have a steel move in VGC is to nuke Flutter Mane out of existance with Heavy Slam, while also sporting a dangerous Fighting weakness in metagames infested by actually strong fighting and fire types (cough cough Urshifu and Ogerbonk).
And lo and behold, Ice types suddently don't suck now that there's actually good ice types in the pool, since unsurprisingly stab ice attacks are actually good when they actually design glass cannon ice types and not Avalugg.

TLDR: I don't think there's any need to change the type chart. People are just too biased to just blame the typing rather than the minmax of a typing.
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So I have a few arguments or additions to make to some of these points.

I think Gamefreak DID consider Psychic's type chart interactions (or lack thereof) with Gen 2's additions. One type I could chalk up to coincidence, but the second one feels a lot more deliberate.

Steel as a type was probably a natural addition regardless, but its resistance to Psychic, even if not directly to nerf it, could very reasonably have come from "Psychic needs to interact with more types, why not resisted by the new type so we don't have to mess with the old ones?" for example.
Dark on the other hand is where I see more intention. It's similar to Fairy with Dragon: a new type introduced with a very optimal match-up against an overbearing type (Immunity to its moves and SE itself against them), plus weaknesses that shore up types that under-performed offensively in the prior Gen(s) that may also hamper that type (Fairy brings up Poison and Steel as a Dragon Res, Dark brings up Fighting for Normal and also Bug for more anti-Psychic). This feels a lot more deliberate to me, especially since looking at Multimedia depictions, Psychic was never QUITE supposed to be this big Menacing Boss type in the same way Dragon was: Sabrina is scary in the anime but she does have the supposed Ghost Weakness, and Psychics were generally just "one of the crowd" for most other depictions while Dragons continued to get big-boss billing through either Trainers or Legendaries until Gen 6 (Lance in 1-2 as the last-boss who is a Specialist, Drake and Rayquaza as big wigs in Gen 3, the Creation Trio + Cynthia's Garchomp Ace in 4, and the Tao Dragons in 5's much more emphasized story).

I agree that Fairy types are not INHERENTLY overpowered, but I would make the argument Fairy is a disproportionately powerful type. You listed some examples like Dachsbun and Tinkaton of mons that are Fairy but not overpowered, but the opposite perspective I would take is "how much better are these two because of that typing?" Look at something like Klefki as well: would it be nearly as irritating a Utility Pokemon if it was pure Steel or Steel/Psychic, losing things like a Dark Resist and Fighting Neutrality that shores up its defensive profile immensely? Same with Tinkaton, who I don't think would get to UU even with her utility move options if not for the fantastic Steel/Fairy typing to let her throw them out. Fairy is a type where in most gens since its release, there are next-to no notable Pokemon who would prefer NOT having their Fairy type all together (Gen 9 has at most the half-measure of Tera where having Fairy as a base type is still a benefit to lure things or have the extra STAB initially.

Here's an opinion that, I don't know about unpopular, but definitely feels like it hasn't gotten as much talk: Gen 6 didn't make Fairy the OP type by adding Fairy (although it's certainly an obnoxious one in its own right), the type that became OP was Ghost. When Steel gained the valuable resistance to Fairy they saw fit to remove its resistances to Dark and Ghost, presumably to not make Steel's profile TOO overbearing defensively (and certainly the right call with things like Aegislash and Mega Metagross incoming that Gen), but the consequence of this was Ghost losing one of its only 2 relevant resists. In Gen 6 this may not have been as apparent because many Megas with a Normal Typing or Sucker Punch mitigated the issue, but now look at Gen 8. Ghost + Anti-Dark damage achieves perfect neutral coverage (see Flutter Mane, Annihilape, or just every Ghost with Focus Blast/Dazzling Gleam/Moonblast type coverage). Dark gained the resistance in the Fairy types in exchange for the increased neutral damage so the change there was more balanced on Paper at least.
 
I think it's fair to say that the defensive properties of the Ice type are a pain point for the type system.

For most types it is possible to design a Pokemon for a variety of roles (both offensive and defensive) in a way where its typing contributes to its viability, rather than hindering it. While types such as Rock and Bug are generally considered below-average defensively, there are Pokemon that use the defensive properties of those types well. Rock-types in particular have historically been able to fill defensive roles if they have good/great special bulk and aren't too passive (Diancie, Nihilego, and Rhyperior).

When you look at the Ice-types which are used defensively, the benefit they can get from their typing isn't anywhere near as high (Avalugg's Ice STAB lets it threaten out physical Dragon and Ground types, Articuno gets an Ice neutrality vs Nidoqueen, Piloswine can threaten out Defoggers, that's basically it). While the types don't have to be perfectly balanced, the fact that there isn't much potential for Ice-types to perform well as anything other than fast attackers (a constraint not felt by any other type to such a degree) does limit creativity. I think that the type chart is mostly in an acceptable state, and fixing this would require a huge cascade of changes to the fundamental nature of the battle system, but I think it's still worth pointing out.

Also when Gamefreak was creating a Rock-type based on Stonehenge with mystical themes, they should have maybe given it a SpD stat higher than that of a Magikarp. Can't blame people for thinking that Rock is a bad type if they refuse to play to its strengths even when given the perfect opportunity.
 
I don't think Fairy types are overpowered at all, I don't even consider them Top 2. Top 3, yes, but I'd put probably both Steel and Ghost ahead of them, at least in Singles. If you mean Doubles, there is a much better argument for Top 2 or even Top 1. Even then, I don't think Fairy is a problem: whatsoever. There will always be a Top 1, and I do not see Fairy as "ahead" in any big stretch. In fact, stacking Fairy Types has still rarely been a thing.

Plus, I feel like a lot of the "Fairy is overpowered" is mostly because Fairy is the newest type. Steel was and still kind of is extremely overpowered, but it's also old so people don't really talk about it as much. I hope that as time goes on (we have already hit 10 years of Fairy Types), people will stop seeing it as some "weird balance decision", and more of what it is: A great, top tier type competitively that also is home to some of the most unique Pokemon designs, and arguably one of the coolest in terms of theming.

Honestly Steel Type isn't even just a problem in competitive. Throwing a few Steel Types on enemy teams in the early game of most Pokemon games would make a huge problem, as Fire types are usually rare, Ground types are usually mid to late game, Fighting Types depend a lot on game... So you have at best a the few neutral types, or the game's offerings of:

normal, flying, bug types

and god forbid in that case you picked the Grass Type.

steel type is such a crazy type that even in singleplayer it can pose a giant risk to balance
 
ant4456 said:
I don't think Fairy types are overpowered at all, I don't even consider them Top 2. Top 3, yes, but I'd put probably both Steel and Ghost ahead of them, at least in Singles. If you mean Doubles, there is a much better argument for Top 2 or even Top 1. Even then, I don't think Fairy is a problem: whatsoever. There will always be a Top 1, and I do not see Fairy as "ahead" in any big stretch. In fact, stacking Fairy Types has still rarely been a thing.

Plus, I feel like a lot of the "Fairy is overpowered" is mostly because Fairy is the newest type. Steel was and still kind of is extremely overpowered, but it's also old so people don't really talk about it as much. I hope that as time goes on (we have already hit 10 years of Fairy Types), people will stop seeing it as some "weird balance decision", and more of what it is: A great, top tier type competitively that also is home to some of the most unique Pokemon designs, and arguably one of the coolest in terms of theming.

Honestly Steel Type isn't even just a problem in competitive. Throwing a few Steel Types on enemy teams in the early game of most Pokemon games would make a huge problem, as Fire types are usually rare, Ground types are usually mid to late game, Fighting Types depend a lot on game... So you have at best a the few neutral types, or the game's offerings of:

normal, flying, bug types

and god forbid in that case you picked the Grass Type.

steel type is such a crazy type that even in singleplayer it can pose a giant risk to balance
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Ooh, you are absolutely right about that one!

Steel’s many resistances may be called a “necessary evil” in competitive as a glue mon to ensure a safe switch-in in most scenarios... though that can easily be accomplished by any great dual type that offer plenty of resistsnces without being a Steel-type. It makes too easy to make a Pokémon’s defensive potential too well, but thankfully that didn’t happened so far compeitively, though it’s a byproduct of GF favoring hyper offense way too much.

And while Steel is a mediocre offensive type due to inconsistent moves, that didn’t stopped making an already great type even better just by giving so many defensive boosts, and while not good offensively, it isn’t outright bad, to the point that the positives coming from being Steel-type far outweight the negatives.

Excadrill would likely still be banned back in Gen 5 even without the Steel-type, but it does say something that several Pokémon is viable partially or even very much thanks to their Steel-typing.
 
Worldie said:
Why would it be, if anything it should be the opposite, as Dragons have hardly ever had any problem dealing with armored knights (in fact, since most dragons know fire moves, dragons rarely struggled with steel types as far as just "hitting supereffectively", it's always just been rather a issue of practical 4MSS in competitive)
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Your second point is partially why I noted weather buff, but here's the thing
Most dragon types can no longer spam high power stab if an ice mon switches in with my change. Choice sets suddenly lose power to prediction since it's an immunity
Similarly if they DO use their stab on a steel it'll be resisted, and either again force not relying on Choice sets, or using a weaker fire move that can then be walled by common Ground/Rock/Water cores

As for steel, eh. The western legends typically have a special sword used to slay them, just that the mortality of the soldier themself is high. Similarly most had an affinity to gold, so that could be a "weakness" mentally
In East Asian legend...
Screenshot_20231016-104651_Chrome.jpg

So Steel being SE is still a good choice thematically
 
Worldie said:
I doubt gen 2 was intentionally to "nerf psychic" per se as gen 1 did not really have a competitive scene (and regardless the only types that interacted with Psychic in a meaningful way either did not really have users or were bugged in first place), and rather they probably wanted to add new types + figured fire should resist ice for logic reasons.
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Incorrect. Sugimori explicitly said that Dark was created for balance reasons.
1697483229341.png

Remember, while competitive balance was never considered, in-game balance was something they were genuinely aware of.
 
pika pal said:
look at Gen 8. Ghost + Anti-Dark damage achieves perfect neutral coverage (see Flutter Mane, Annihilape, or just every Ghost with Focus Blast/Dazzling Gleam/Moonblast type coverage). Dark gained the resistance in the Fairy types in exchange for the increased neutral damage so the change there was more balanced on Paper at least.
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That's more the fault of the removal of Pursuit than the removal of the Steel resist. Look at NatDex (both Gens 8 and 9), the Dark weak Ghosts not named Dragapult are kept in check much better there (and Dragapult can more be blamed on Z-Moves than anything).
 
AztecCroc said:
That's more the fault of the removal of Pursuit than the removal of the Steel resist. Look at NatDex (both Gens 8 and 9), the Dark weak Ghosts not named Dragapult are kept in check much better there (and Dragapult can more be blamed on Z-Moves than anything).
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Pursuit wouldn't help in the case of some of the later Ghosts I noted like Annihilape (who is bulky enough to not have any fear of Pursuit users anyway)

252 SpA Flutter Mane Moonblast vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Tyranitar in Sand: 216-254 (63.3 - 74.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO (so no reason it'd switch out and have to take the weak OR strong Pursuit)

And my point remains on the fact that anything with Ghost STAB can get its coverage with 1 move, 2 at most, just by nature, and can get away with not watching for weird combos because only one of those Resistances is a common one vs Fairy having 2-3 Resistances, of which 1 is the main Defensive typing in the game and the other 2 are pretty common even if not the focus of a mon. Pursuit has literally no relation to my contention with Ghost's incredibly scarce defensive answers on the Type Chart, even acknowledging it keeps the Ghosts-in-practice controllable as offensive counterplay.
 
pika pal said:
Pursuit wouldn't help in the case of some of the later Ghosts I noted like Annihilape (who is bulky enough to not have any fear of Pursuit users anyway)

252 SpA Flutter Mane Moonblast vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Tyranitar in Sand: 216-254 (63.3 - 74.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO (so no reason it'd switch out and have to take the weak OR strong Pursuit)

And my point remains on the fact that anything with Ghost STAB can get its coverage with 1 move, 2 at most, just by nature, and can get away with not watching for weird combos because only one of those Resistances is a common one vs Fairy having 2-3 Resistances, of which 1 is the main Defensive typing in the game and the other 2 are pretty common even if not the focus of a mon. Pursuit has literally no relation to my contention with Ghost's incredibly scarce defensive answers on the Type Chart, even acknowledging it keeps the Ghosts-in-practice controllable as offensive counterplay.
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In Gen 8 which is what you started with when making this point (FM and Annihilape are Gen 9) the only non-legendary Ghost above UUBL is Dragapult. UUBL consists of Gengar, Mega Sableye, and Blacephalon. UU is Aegislash and Chandelure.

Gen 9 has Ape and Flutter join Pult in the Uber zone, and Gholdengo and Sinistcha (who'll probably fall off given it's UU in regular gen 9) in OU and that's it above UU.

Pursuit absolutely checks the Ghosts who aren't just broken regardless.
 
ant4456 said:
my hot take is pursuit is dumb anyways and making trapping based on typings is dumb also

esp. because it also punishes psychic, IMO one of the weakest types chart wise
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I sort of get the idea for Ghost since it's immune to conventional trapping so this is a specialized answer, but Psychic being collateral is an unfortunate trade-off there.
 
Psychic definitely occupied a weird spot in Gen 1: its overall lack of type interactions both defensively and offensively lended to a powerful type, but it was really at once both an above average mid-game type and a busted uber powerful type up there with Dragon, and in-game balance wise there were two places it was in: it was a type with some mons like Mr. Mime, Alakazam, Jynx, and more who had great Special but were given really bad physical bulk to counteract it as their "weak point" despite their unintuitive type interactions.

The big elephant in the room, however, and what truly made Psychic powerful, was one (or really two) Pokemon: Mewtwo. Mewtwo was basically designed as this god-tier powerful Pokemon that you meet at the very end of the game in the very last and most deadly dungeon of the game. RBY definitely had single player JRPG game design and dungeons were a big part of it: many optional dungeons had different flavors and the legendary birds were different "dungeon bosses" of different elements, and Mewtwo was basically the ultimate dungeon boss and de facto final boss of RBY: much, much stronger than anything else with no real weak points, while its high Special and powerful Psychic STAB and Recover made it a near unstoppable force and a challenge to catch in-game. It was basically designed so that you use it, it's unstoppable, you fight it and try to catch it, it will be a major force and challenge to try to capture it for your Pokedex.

Mew was similar although not intended to be caught and more of a socialization mystery at the time, but its whole thing in-universe is that it has everything's DNA and can thus do almost anything and has a solid 100 across stat spread, while Mewtwo is more specialized and in-universe is a scientific experiment that went berserk and destroyed the lab it was in.

I do imagine the Psychic type being the powerhouse it was in Gen 1 was at least partially intentional in that regard, mainly to highlight the power of Mewtwo and Mew as these Uber powerful forces above everyone else. Other Psychic-types being strong in PvP was collateral, that said, while they were capable of being dealt with, picking on their weak physical bulk was the way for the most part, not "hitting them super effectively", which is something I think they wanted to change in Gen 2 hence why Dark was created: to block Psychic *and* hit it super effectively.

In hindsight this makes me realize Tyranitar's type combination was likely deliberately made so it could be the powerhouse that could best all other legendaries/pseudo-legendaries: a 600 BST tank that can wall Mewtwo and hit it with Crunch, resists Dragonite's Hyper Beam and also hits it with Rock STAB, deals with both Lugia and Ho-oh and the original legendary birds.
 
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