Push Ups > Like That, Drake went hard
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Post your searing hot takes
- Thread starter Yung Dramps
- Start date
not a hot take
Rage Fist would be better as a Payback clone than what it is now.
It's not as hard as it sounds. The first step is to try to not make it worse.
For example, moves like Dire Claw are just poorly designed.
For any normal game, combating power creep would be nigh impossible. However, dexit makes that herculean task laughably easy. However, not contributing to power creep is more difficult than it sounds. A guaranteed way to do this is to make all new pokemon underpowered, but that would essentially make the meta the same as it always was. Game Freak has done a surprisingly good job of balancing adding fresh things to the meta with not causing power creep all things considered. Most of the relevant new pokemon in gen 9 have a weakness. Gholdengo and Glimora are rather slow, and not too bulky, while weak to the best type in the game, dondozo turns doubles into a raid boss, which makes it very susceptible to counter play, Ting Lu is incredibly passive, and Walking Wake is weather dependent. They have also tried to combat the ridiculous Mon with more Mon that would keep them in check. The pokemon that would be fast a generation ago are outsped by the 5 billion 400+ speed Mon introduced, who are in turn countered by Palafin, Raging Bolt, and Kingambit, who are in turn countered by Farigiraf and Upper Hand. Gholdengo and Glimora are threatened by Maushold, who can not only clear hazards despite Gholdengos best efforts, but who also becomes an unstoppable death machine on the same turn, but that pokemon has terrible stats. The new stall Mon are countered by the many new setup sweepers, who are countered by Dondozo and Clodsire.
However, Game Freak obviously can't plan for everything. Maushold and Farigiraf are not very relevant, Upper Hand was completely worthless, and the Mon that they planned to be balanced by weaknesses were not. Palafin switching out was no big deal, Houndstones bad stats were easily worth the instakill button, the fast mons and Kingambit were a bit stronger then they thought, and Great Tusks speed was overcome with Rapid Spin, and not that big of a problem in the first place thanks to its great bulk. Then, the Hisui mons dropped, who were probably not playtested at all (still not an excuse to give an already fantastic Mon Dire Claw). Also, making mons balanced in both singles and doubles was a sisyphean task. Houndstone and Palafin were practically irrelevant in doubles, but were very quickly banned in singles. Game Freak was all set up to make a fantastic meta, but they had too many ideas, and some of them were not thought through enough in the 2 year scramble to get SV out so the cards can make money again. Like Icarus, they were victims of their own hubris, and thus, the nightmare of OU on release was born.
As a start, Dire Claw should be 60 BP and have Venoshock's effect of double power if the foe is poisoned, but with the increased crit rate and 30% poison chance so that it stands out. Zero to Hero should only last three turns or something along those lines before Palafin turns back to Zero form (maybe have it need to switch out to activate its ability again? IDK, haven't thought that far.) Rage Fist, as I already mentioned, should just be a Payback clone and maybe have Last Respects only be a +10 BP boost per fainted mon instead of +50.
I think 20, 25, or 30 BP boost for last respects would be fair. likewise, rage fist should be boosted by like 35 or 40.
The thing about mons is that everything is so precariously balanced that anything can shift the meta wildly, especially some nerfs like what they did to Talonflame.
Realistically, between Dexit, new moves and mons, and the precarious balance, there isn't a reason we need things as overtuned as we got in SV.
Does set rotation and the like actually handle power creep in practice? The devs wanting to push the limits of they system is still going to be there regardless. Meanwhile, from a player perspective, I would think that the new stuff needs to end up even fancier when it's attempting to replace a favourite instead of coexisting alongside it.
Yeah, look at VGC when all the big dog legendaries aren't available, or even Incineroar in the past 2 games.
I genuinely don't understand. If power creep is the devs continually making new stuff that's comparatively too strong, what does their ability to handle current and old stuff have to do with it? For that matter, VGC comes off as being really bad at addressing current problems (no communication, a year or more lag on action, only two restricted mons still being very overwhelming when your total team is 4/6) so why would that be a reason to believe they are good at addressing future problems?
In my opinion, OneShot is not as good of a game as everyone says it is. I don't think it is bad, but it is not the modern masterpiece everyone says it is. Keep in mind that I have not played the game, but I know the plot, and have seen the gameplay, and it is more of a story focused game. I will say, it does a fantastic job of handling the fourth wall. It integrates the gameplay into the meta-narrative incredibly well, and has truly mastered the art form.
The thing is, that is basically the entire game. The game does one thing, and that's it. It does not tell an impactful and meaningful story and it does not have exciting gameplay. It is a novel concept, but that is all it is. A novelty. Its meta-narrative is pretty cool and well designed, but there is not really anything else to it.
And the thing is, it is only the third best game at meta-storytelling that I have seen. It is outshined by Doki Doki Literature Club and Undertale. While OneShot handles the meta aspect itself better, the two other games have something it doesn't, that being other forms of appeal. Doki Doki Literature Club breaks the fourth wall not just for the sake of it, but to make its frankly otherwise unimpressive horror aspects very unnerving. And Undertale has used its meta narrative to insight terror into the player, add to its story, and overall redefine every players outlook on RPGs, and basically everything else you could imagine.
In addition, breaking the fourth wall has an inherent danger to it. There is a necessary component to being invested in a story, called suspension of disbelief. What this means is that during a story, the consumer of the media must not acknowledge the fact that it is only a story in order for it to have any meaningful impact. Fourth wall breaking completely obliterates any notion of this. So a meta-narrative can easily detract from the regular narrative significantly. Now, let's discuss its impact on the other two games I mentioned. Doki Doki Literature Clubs regular narrative is completely and utterly destroyed by this, but ultimately, that does not matter that much, because the regular narrative mostly happens before the fourth wall break, and the regular narrative was really just to sucker punch the player with the twist. Undertale is effectively unharmed by this concept, because its meta-narrative is kept completely sub-text, the concept of a player itself never really being directly acknowledged, although heavily implied. Now, how does OneShot fare against this? Terribly. The game tries to tell a regular story as well, even playing the fact that you killed the main character for emotional damage, but it is completely undermined by the fact that you have to GO INTO THE GAME FILES IN ORDER TO PLAY THE GAME. Any impact the regular narrative could have had is reduced to nothing by the meta-narrative. While this is a worthy sacrifice, It is hard to call the game a masterpiece when so much of it is telling a story whose emotional impact was doomed from the start.
Do I think OneShot is a good game? Yes. Do I think it is a masterpiece? No. It is a unique experience, but one that cannot compare to the likes of Undertale like some people say.
The thing is, that is basically the entire game. The game does one thing, and that's it. It does not tell an impactful and meaningful story and it does not have exciting gameplay. It is a novel concept, but that is all it is. A novelty. Its meta-narrative is pretty cool and well designed, but there is not really anything else to it.
And the thing is, it is only the third best game at meta-storytelling that I have seen. It is outshined by Doki Doki Literature Club and Undertale. While OneShot handles the meta aspect itself better, the two other games have something it doesn't, that being other forms of appeal. Doki Doki Literature Club breaks the fourth wall not just for the sake of it, but to make its frankly otherwise unimpressive horror aspects very unnerving. And Undertale has used its meta narrative to insight terror into the player, add to its story, and overall redefine every players outlook on RPGs, and basically everything else you could imagine.
In addition, breaking the fourth wall has an inherent danger to it. There is a necessary component to being invested in a story, called suspension of disbelief. What this means is that during a story, the consumer of the media must not acknowledge the fact that it is only a story in order for it to have any meaningful impact. Fourth wall breaking completely obliterates any notion of this. So a meta-narrative can easily detract from the regular narrative significantly. Now, let's discuss its impact on the other two games I mentioned. Doki Doki Literature Clubs regular narrative is completely and utterly destroyed by this, but ultimately, that does not matter that much, because the regular narrative mostly happens before the fourth wall break, and the regular narrative was really just to sucker punch the player with the twist. Undertale is effectively unharmed by this concept, because its meta-narrative is kept completely sub-text, the concept of a player itself never really being directly acknowledged, although heavily implied. Now, how does OneShot fare against this? Terribly. The game tries to tell a regular story as well, even playing the fact that you killed the main character for emotional damage, but it is completely undermined by the fact that you have to GO INTO THE GAME FILES IN ORDER TO PLAY THE GAME. Any impact the regular narrative could have had is reduced to nothing by the meta-narrative. While this is a worthy sacrifice, It is hard to call the game a masterpiece when so much of it is telling a story whose emotional impact was doomed from the start.
Do I think OneShot is a good game? Yes. Do I think it is a masterpiece? No. It is a unique experience, but one that cannot compare to the likes of Undertale like some people say.
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Wait, what?
I said that they could use Dexit rotating the available pool of mons to not go overboard with the powercreep because the new stuff will have its time to shine anyway.
Then you asked if that would work, I replied with VGC being an example of it working because just cutting off the legendaries work as a great example of how to keep powercreep in check.
Incineroar is another example because it's been one of the best mons in the format since USUM iirc, without it around, other mons have their time to shine.
The same concept is used in Smogon tiers. When something gets banned, the meta readjusts itself.
I'm not saying Game Freak is doing a great job at it, on the contrary. But the framework is already there, so it would be possible.
Not strictly whether it would work, whether it does work. TCGs for example have had a lot of both rotation and power creep at the same time, and it's hard to argue that gen 9 did not include significant power creep "despite" Dexit.
I don't find that a good example because the big legends are explicitly not designed for the regular format. It can also backfire when they accidentally make something that isn't unbalanced (e.g. gen 5 Kyurem-Black) but it's still restricted based on intent rather than results. Then there's the mess of their implementation for formats with the big legendaries allowed.
For me, something like Incineroar or CHALK shows that there needs to be a different framework with faster responses than the next game or generation (as well as potentially different formats for different power levels). In which case, once a good framework for targeted bans exists, sweeping bans for everything in a given time frame are redundant.
Oh.
Yeah, at the current time, hell no.
Gen 9 in particular introduced a LOT of overtuned things that just don't make sense.
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