Category: Reader Questions

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:

The problem with cherrim’s flower gift ability is that it boosts the wrong stats. Imagine if cherrim had its special attack and speed state boosted in the sun! Not necessarily doubled, perhaps just buffed by 1.5. Cherrim doesn’t exactly have the best special movepool, but it does have STAB grass attacks + weather ball, which would make it a pretty competent sun sweeper.

Mmm, sure, sounds fun.  I mean, the problem with reliance on weather as a general thing is that Tyranitar still exists and can say “nope” to you at will, especially if you have as much riding on the weather as Cherrim does.  Also Cherrim’s starting attributes are poor enough that something like Chlorophyll Venusaur (who’s tough enough for Growth to be viable some of the time) might still outclass her.  But yeah, Grass + Fire has always been great, and this would probably make Cherrim suck less, though I wonder if it actually decreases her flexibility in doubles, since much of the point of Flower Gift is that it applies to your whole team, and you now have fewer partners who are eligible for the damage boost.  Then again, everyone likes speed.

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.

Frezgle asks:

Re: Litten, it might only be black because of its fur being so oily as it says on the official website, and not the typical ‘black=dark’ thing. If they’re going with the bomb/explosion motif, and if the marking on its head really is based on the symbol for brimstone and not just random stripes, we could see something totally weird like Fire/Steel or even Fire/Rock.

Eh, I think they’re likely to stay away from “totally weird” on the starters; they want starters to have broad appeal, rather than be quirky and niche.  But sure, rule nothing out.  As always, I am the very soul of apathy as far as predicting things about upcoming games.

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.

vikingboybilly asks:

Do you find it odd that Carnivine, a venus flytrap, is poorly matched against bug type pokemon? What would you do to fix that (besides ignoring it)?

Hmm.  It hadn’t occurred to me, but yes, that is unfortunate.  Well, I’ve talked before about improving Carnivine by changing its type to Grass/Poison, among other things, which would help, but looking at it from this particular perspective… at the moment Carnivine has an ability, Levitate, which is great but actually not particularly helpful to a Grass-type.  You could replace that with a unique ability – “Flytrap,” “Flycatcher,” something like that – which absorbs Bug attacks for healing (in the manner of Water Absorb) or an attack boost (in the manner of Sap Sipper).  I think that would get the point across nicely.

Anonymous asks:

What do you think the in-universe justification for the national pokedex is? like why is kanto first, then johto, and so on. Is it because Oak created the pokedexes?

I think maybe the better question is “why is there an order at all?”  

They’re not physical books; they don’t need to be printed, so there’s no need for the entries to actually exist in any sort of canonical order.  The user can just ask for one specific entry, or for a list of entries arranged alphabetically, or by type, or by geographical distribution, or whatever.  In-universe there is no obvious reason why, for instance, the Pidgey line should come immediately after the Weedle line.  And then, of course, the one clear ordering principle – the fact that evolutionary families go together – is then violated apparently at random (again, from an in-universe perspective) by Pokémon like Pichu or Kingdra.  

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