Category: Game Design Questions

Anonymous asks:

Hi dear pokemaniacal, what do you think about a new “Cosmic” type added to the game? A type that would´t bother much the current metagame, given to very little pokemon in form of Megas to don´t mess too with the current types (like Solrock/Lunatone, Clefable, Sigilyph, Deoxis and the likes or few forgotten ones as Xatu) or just only to the new legendaries to add more mysticism and exclusivity to them. Anyway, what pokemon would you give this type? Match-ups? Would this type have right to exist?

I pretty much have to refer you to this recent question and answer, which is kinda my default reply to anything involving adding more types.  I just don’t think it adds anything worthwhile at this point – is the fact that we don’t have a whole type dedicated to Pokémon associated with celestial phenomena really a significant limitation on design?  If we want something we can give to legendary Pokémon to make them more powerful, well, sure – we’ve pretty much thrown game balance out the window with them long ago anyway, and there are good aesthetic reasons for wanting them to stand head-and-shoulders above other Pokémon.  But personally I’d rather overhaul the way we interact with legendary Pokémon in the games completely.

Anonymous asks:

Having just replayed red, I cam honestly say… I just dont get what people mean when they say Blue is a jerk. Like, is it cos he’s kinds cocky? Hes not that hard to beat, so I cant really relate to the whole “rivals used to be challenging!” Rhetoric. imo the hardest rival was probably N.

I wasn’t aware there was such a thing as “rivals used to be challenging” rhetoric.  But sure, if there is, it strikes me as probably quite silly.

Anyway, Blue.  I think he’s clearly meant to be a jerk, because the whole thing with Oak turning up at the end of the game to call him out for not loving his Pokémon enough doesn’t really make sense if he’s not.  Personally I think that, above and beyond just thinking he’s better than you, he consistently goes out of his way to be insulting to you and diminish your accomplishments.  Like, I don’t know if he’s necessarily a bad person (well, I mean, he probably is, since he turns up at Silph Co. during the Team Rocket takeover and doesn’t lift a finger to help, but you could easily put that down to poor writing) but he always struck me as rather unpleasant to be around.

Anonymous asks:

Remember when 100 base attack was “high”? Gamefreak just keeps giving new pokemon more and more insane stats, causing older pokemon to pale in comparison.

…no?  I mean, in generation I, Rhydon had 130 base attack, and Alakazam had 135 base special.  And sure, there are Pokémon that top that now, but when you cut out legendary and mega-evolved Pokémon (who are, y’know, supposed to make others pale in comparison) most of them are, like… not actually very good?  Like, Haxorus is fine, but I’d still rather take Garchomp or Dragonite.  Chandelure is good, but hardly dominating.  And when you look at the defensive stats, well, pretty consistently the best Pokémon are the well-rounded ones, not the ones who have one stat absurdly inflated – Avalugg is garbage, Florges and Goodra are fine but hardly the strongest around, and… well, Shuckle.  Just… Shuckle.  

So… I disagree with all parts of this statement.

Godzillakiryu91 asks:

What seven would that be, and what would decide where an existing Pokemon would get placed?

I knew someone would ask that next.

To be honest it’s not even so much a revision of the current type chart as throwing it out altogether and starting from scratch.  Sort of a “can I just do this completely differently?” thought experiment, which probably has to go along with massive changes to how we do status effects, PP, accuracy, and several other things (including doing away with physical/special).  Pokémon don’t even have types at all, they just have weaknesses and resistances to attack types (of which attacks can have one, two, or even none), and those are assigned case-by-case.  

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vikingboybilly asks:

The canned idea of a BIRD type is starting to grow on me. It would have been GameFreak’s way of differentiating the wind element from all the NORMAL birds in the game, and they wouldn’t have had the NORMAL type on them. This also got me thinking that maybe FISH types would be cool to round out the BIRD and BUG types. Some other ideas: EARTH, SNOW, WOOD, FOSSIL, MAGIC, MUSIC, and of course, LIGHT. I’ve also seen COSMIC on youtube. Feel free to praise or criticize any of my choices.

Well, that’s the thing, I have more of an inclination (unpopular, I think, in the Pokémon community) to reduce the type chart down rather than add more to it.  So I would reject all of those, as well as probably several of the existing types, including Ground, Bug, Flying and Dragon.  I recently thought through this, for no particular reason, and I think you could reasonably cut it down to as few as seven.  So yeah.  I think we’re just coming at this whole thing from opposite directions entirely.

EDIT: The inevitable follow-up question.

Anonymous asks:

I miss douchebag rivals like blue and silver. Why dont they make more characters like that? Do you think they should?

Hmm.  Well, it sort of depends what you mean by “douchebag rivals.”  

I think rival characters should say something interesting about what it means to be a Pokémon trainer, and sometimes characters with major negative qualities can be good ways to do that.  “Nice” rivals like Bianca can do the same thing in different ways, though.  Blue was a douchebag because he was supposed to illustrate what a good trainer is not; Silver was a douchebag because he was supposed to illustrate how being a trainer changes you.  The closest thing we’ve had to that since Silver is Hugh, who isn’t really a douchebag but does have his troubling anger issues, but he’s sort of doing something different because the point of him is to reframe the Team Plasma conflict with a new perspective.  So I suppose I think it’s a matter of whether you can do something clever with it, and what kind of message you can use the character to create.

vikingboybilly asks:

If Unova is supposed to be New York, how does stuff like the dragon spiral tower and those extremely egyptian-like ruins make any sense? The native Americans (or pre-columbian migrants, whatever) in the northeast didn’t make stuff like that as far as I know. Doesn’t this annoy you as a RUIN MANIAC?

Well, it’s not “supposed to be New York.”  It’s supposed to be the same physical shape as New York, and New York’s cosmopolitan character is supposed to influence the way we think and feel about Unova, but it’s a stretch to say that every feature of Unova, or even most of them, should map to something in the real city – especially given that New York is, y’know, a city, and Unova is a whole region.  I mean, Johto is loosely based on the Kansai region, but I defy you to find the real world equivalent to the Ruins of Alph; Hoenn is Kyushu, rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise, but it has a big honking desert in the middle of it for some reason; the Parfum Palace in Kalos is clearly the Chateau de Versailles, but it’s just as clearly in the wrong place.  I think it’s reasonable to say that Castelia City is supposed to feel like Manhattan, but beyond that… meh?