Feels like gen1 thought it would be funny to replace dragon Type With flying see: gyarados, charizard, aerodactyl. Then in gen8 dragons are such as applin and wtf does that mean?!
Long story short is that back in Gen 1, Dragon as a type was designed to be highly advanced as a type because it resists all four of the "basic elemental" types, Grass, Fire, Water, and Electric. Three being starter types and another being another early type.Feels like gen1 thought it would be funny to replace dragon Type With flying see: gyarados, charizard, aerodactyl. Then in gen8 dragons are such as applin and wtf does that mean?!
Considering half of the reason Steel exists was to nerf Psychic... I doubt they'd do this.as a psychic type fan, please literally just make us neutral to steel
like holy shit dude we have a theme of bending metal spoons, we do not need to be resisted by the best type in the game. Then there is 20,000 Dark Types, and the offensive prowess is fucking mid. SE against Fighting Types which have Knock Off and U-Turn, and Poison. Poison is interesting but then a lot of Poison types have dualtypes that make it not matter.
You hit on something I was thinking about a while ago: it'd be an incredibly interesting mechanical shakeup if some (not all) types were given one move or ability which gave them an advantage against a type they're normally poorly matched against.Considering half of the reason Steel exists was to nerf Psychic... I doubt they'd do this.
Now, if they want to retool the move Kinesis to have an effect like this, or introduce an entirely new move in the same vein as Freeze-Dry, that could be reasonable.
Psychic is unfortunately "balanced" by having a rather disproportionate amount of legendary Pokémon with the typing, which tends to make the weaker Psychic types struggle.
...I'm also realizing that a good number of Psychic Pokémon have extremely good Abilities/signature moves to buff them up. Maybe I'm just having tunnel vision, but there aren't a lot of truly bad Psychic lines.
100%.and then psychic resists fairy so a) it's defensive profile improves too and b) psychic /fairy doesn't become too oppressive as coverage since there's a lot of mons with those two types in their movepool. it's the first thing i'd change on the type tableas a psychic type fan, please literally just make us neutral to steel
like holy shit dude we have a theme of bending metal spoons, we do not need to be resisted by the best type in the game. Then there is 20,000 Dark Types, and the offensive prowess is fucking mid. SE against Fighting Types which have Knock Off and U-Turn, and Poison. Poison is interesting but then a lot of Poison types have dualtypes that make it not matter.
I would be ok with this because Psychic was hit too hard with nerfs in gen 2. Dark being immune to and hitting it super-effictively and Steel resisting it was too much. Even the special split was a nerf even if it wasn't done to specifically weaken Psychic.as a psychic type fan, please literally just make us neutral to steel
I think this works better when it's a gimmick of a specific mon (like Corrosion or Salt Cure) rather than something that can show up frequently. At least Kinesis is already locked to one line?You hit on something I was thinking about a while ago: it'd be an incredibly interesting mechanical shakeup if some (not all) types were given one move or ability which gave them an advantage against a type they're normally poorly matched against.
- As you say, Kinesis could be retooled to be effective against Steel
- In a similar vein, Poison is normally ineffective against Steel, but certain metals can be weakened or dissolved with acid so perhaps Acid or Acid Spray could be repurposed
- Sky Uppercut sadly got cut, but totally should have been this against Flying-types
- A Fire-type move which is super-effective against Water could be a fun idea: perhaps a sort of reverse Burn Up in which the user spouts a flame so hot that it evaporates the foe's Water-type and/or renders them incapable of using Water moves
I think having a small handful of moves that subvert the type chart could be a good thing. Freeze-Dry is a move that does this with a type that's already strong offensively, and it comes at a notable power cut (it's still a broken move, mind you). Psychic is not a strong type offensively (though removing one of its usual resistances does bump it up a notch), and if a move of that type was made to hit Steel super-effectively, I can't imagine it would have particularly wide distribution, as Psychic as a type covers a rather wide spectrum of concepts. I guess the only two resists left after Steel would be covered by Bug, which could be problem, but--oh wait, Signal Beam doesn't exist anymore, it's fine.To the "type moves above"...
This is all fine and dandy but did you forget what happened that one time they made a move that flips one of its type affinities?
No? Let me tell you, Freeze Dry broke or almost broke several of the pokemon that learn it, specifically because one the typical switch ins of ice type, water types, suddently aren't safe anymore (and in fact, with how many water + iceweak pokemon there are, the amount of stuff Freeze Dry hits supereffectively is quite insane).
So please no, we don't need moves that "change the type chart". Messing with the game systems often proves problematic, expecially longterm, unless balanced by very heavy negatives, see Freeze Dry or also Urshifu basically breaking the entire game by virtue of negating one of the most important aspects of the game ("clicking protect is always safe the first time").
I like to assume that each of the Johto leaders' main Pokémon has some kind of reference to them or something about their character:Agree on the first point. Poliwrath being Chuck's ace, for instance; no notable trainer used Poliwrath in RBY and it being Water-type gave it an interesting matchup against the player's starter - it's a tough fight if you're using Typhlosion. And big agree on Vileplume, it's an underused Pokemon in general and rounds out her team quite nicely.
In Gale of Darkness, there's also Salamence who is used by Eldes, and Dragonite, who is treated as the game's final Shadow Pokémon for all intents and purposes. Most of you probably already knew this, but I find it neat how between the two games all four psuedos at the time were a Shadow Pokémon used by a late-game opponent. :)Nascour uses Metagross and Evice uses Tyranitar in Colosseum
and then with gen 3 they found out that, yes, they are capable of developing a whole new character to be the champion in a satisfactory manner. with hindsight on i think a new character would have been a better johto champion, but i do agree that they probably felt unsure of that in gen 2 development (which plays it safe with characters in general).So who do they make the final fight of the main story? It's either a complete rando, or promote a known trainer. And a rando(even if they gave Rando Lance's Lake of Rage interactions) would probably feel random.
Is this a commonly held view? I'd be super interested to hear your reasoning, since I've always assumed Silver was earning Gym Badges. He never outright says he's challenging Gyms, but I feel like it's implied a couple of times. As soon as you enter Olivine City he comes out of Jasmine's Gym, annoyed that she's abandoned her post to take care of Amphy, and he's pretty clearly on his way to challenge the Elite Four when you meet him in Victory Road. Plus, while I know the games play fast and loose with NPCs and player-required HMs, he's confirmed to have crossed over to Cianwood and scaled Tohjo Falls at least.Silver is explicitly not the sort of person to take on the Gym Challenge
They didn't change up teams in the main story, only rematches.It's frustrating because HGSS had such an easy opportunity to fix Lance's team. In HGSS, Lance and Clair are differentiated by their choice of moves: she uses special moves - most obviously Dragon Pulse - while his Pokemon mostly use physical ones, with his signature Dragonite making use of Safeguard in conjunction with Outrage. He makes heavy use of Hyper Beam rather than the more sensible Giga Impact, but that's sort of justified as Hyper Beam is kind of associated with him.
But Outrage was made a tutor move in Platinum, so a bunch of other species became entirely viable options for his team rather than the uninteresting trio of Dragonite. Case in point:
I know everyone always says Tyranitar for Lance, but really that would be far more appropriate for Karen.
- Meganium - learns Outrage, but also can do its own thing with Safeguard+Petal Dance
- Ampharos - always thought it would have been cool to fight one of these after having saved Amphy. Real wasted opportunity that no boss in Johto had it imo, Surge doesn't even use one in his rematch
- Kangaskhan - a bit out there for Lance, but still
- Kingdra - yes Clair also uses one, but not in the same way and numerous other Champions have used Gym Leaders' signature species
That's a HGSS thing, you never interact with Silver without fighting him in gen 2, save for when he's staring at Elm's lab before he steals his starter.As soon as you enter Olivine City he comes out of Jasmine's Gym, annoyed that she's abandoned her post to take care of Amphy
That's... not even close to true! The Olivine cutscene is there back in Gen 2, as I described. He also has non-battle appearances in the Sprout Tower and the Mahogany hideout in GSC, just as he does in HGSS. I dig the confidence, though!That's a HGSS thing, you never interact with Silver without fighting him in gen 2, save for when he's staring at Elm's lab before he steals his starter.
I mean, this is why I said "a few" and not "all" - I think there is also much merit in it being one Pokemon's gimmick too (I have to admit I'd forgotten Corrosion's existence when I wrote that).To the "type moves above"...
This is all fine and dandy but did you forget what happened that one time they made a move that flips one of its type affinities?
No? Let me tell you, Freeze Dry broke or almost broke several of the pokemon that learn it, specifically because one the typical switch ins of ice type, water types, suddently aren't safe anymore (and in fact, with how many water + iceweak pokemon there are, the amount of stuff Freeze Dry hits supereffectively is quite insane).
So please no, we don't need moves that "change the type chart". Messing with the game systems often proves problematic, expecially longterm, unless balanced by very heavy negatives, see Freeze Dry or also Urshifu basically breaking the entire game by virtue of negating one of the most important aspects of the game ("clicking protect is always safe the first time").
...I didn't say they did? I said they could have done, which is not the same thing.They didn't change up teams in the main story, only rematches.
You could say Freeze Dry works *too well* in OU as it was a heavy contributor to Iron Bundle's ban (since water + freeze dry is perfect coverage) and also to Kyurem's previous (and potentially incoming) ban.Freeze Dry did work well.
The main issue Flying Press has is that it's not really a upgrade and not even a sidegrade over the two stabs. Not only it has both lower BP and accuracy, but ultimately the resulting type chart efficiency is actually worse than just having the two stabs. Even before Hawlucha got the amazing BB + CC combo (it needs a AA now ngl), you'd often just not run one of the two stabs or run a suboptimal option like Acrobatics (which sinergized with Unburden anyway) or High Jump Kick.Flying Press was just bad because it's almost never very effective in OU :D and it's hard to explain to use it vs Brave Bird / Close Combat
I feel like something they could stand to do to help psychic types is via better moves. We’ve been using Zen headbutt/Psychic/psyshock for so long that we could reasonably do so like what Fighting has had happen comparing gen 1 to 3 or even 4.Considering half of the reason Steel exists was to nerf Psychic... I doubt they'd do this.
Now, if they want to retool the move Kinesis to have an effect like this, or introduce an entirely new move in the same vein as Freeze-Dry, that could be reasonable.
Psychic is unfortunately "balanced" by having a rather disproportionate amount of legendary Pokémon with the typing, which tends to make the weaker Psychic types struggle.
...I'm also realizing that a good number of Psychic Pokémon have extremely good Abilities/signature moves to buff them up. Maybe I'm just having tunnel vision, but there aren't a lot of truly bad Psychic lines.
There's the issue of Fighting being involved, meaning that it has no way to hit Ghosts. Even beyond that, Fighting and Flying also have a weird relationship with each other, they're not particularly similar or different. Something like Fire/Dark would interact with a lot of the type chart, Ice/Water would be severe moveslot compression, or Dark/Ghost would just be funny. I don't know if any of those would be good/useless/broken, but they all seem like they'd at least answer questions that the uselessness of Flying Press didn't help with.The main issue Flying Press has is that it's not really a upgrade and not even a sidegrade over the two stabs. Not only it has both lower BP and accuracy, but ultimately the resulting type chart efficiency is actually worse than just having the two stabs. Even before Hawlucha got the amazing BB + CC combo (it needs a AA now ngl), you'd often just not run one of the two stabs or run a suboptimal option like Acrobatics (which synergized with Unburden anyway) or High Jump Kick.