Category: Pokémon Design Questions

Anonymous asks:

Could you try to fix carnivine for me? I quite like the concept as a beginning but wish there were a bit more…

Like, mechanically speaking?  Eh, I can give it a shot, but no promises…

So, what’s wrong with Carnivine?  Um.  Well.  Just about everything, to be honest, but the short list would be rock-bottom speed, mediocre defences, and a terrible offensive movepool (which does a brilliant job of mitigating the one useful thing about Carnivine, its good – but by no means excellent – attack stat).  So, um… what do we do with that?

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Anonymous asks:

Why do Vanillite and Swirlix get bashed and raged at for being based off of food, but Exeggcute is given a free pass? Is it just because Exeggcute is from first gen?

Well, I think if you spend more than about two seconds considering it, you can come up with more convincing reasons.  Like, I suspect people who dislike Swirlix and Vanillite are likely to be more turned off by them on the grounds that eggs are things that exist in nature, while ice cream and candyfloss are not.  A sunny-side up Pokémon would probably suffer similar bad press (we’ll also gloss over the fact that in-universe sources actually describe Exeggcute clusters as being more like seeds than eggs anyway).  Then there’s the fact that Exeggcute is actually interesting and quirky – they have the thing where they’re multiple bodies in a psychic link, and they evolve in a really weird direction, becoming a goddamn walking coconut tree.  Vanillite… is an ice cream, has ice powers, and becomes a bigger ice cream.  Personally I have no problem with Vanillite being a food Pokémon; I have a problem with the fact that Vanillite is just bloody dull.  Swirlix less so; I’m okay with Swirlix, although I kinda think more could have been done with that idea.  Exeggcute and Exeggutor are just a lot more interesting than both, I think (also, you have to admit, their English names are badass).

Anonymous asks:

What would be your ideal worm–>cocoon–>some kind of winged thing line?

I don’t really have an “ideal” one, in the sense that there’s something in the back of my head that would work really well for it, but if you really wanted me to do the whole caterpillar/cocoon/butterfly thing, then I guess I think it would be really neat to do something with the Atlas moth.  You know, this guy:

As it’s one of the biggest moths in the world, as well as named after the titan who holds up the sky, we have an excuse to do some somewhat unconventional things with it, like allow it to learn Fly and make it a big physical bruiser instead of special attack and support.  Maybe have it punch things with six arms at once.  I want to do something with the false snake heads on its wing tips too, but as tempting as it is, I worry that giving it actual snake heads that bite opponents is probably a bit too weird for something that traditionally would go in an early-game slot, and probably make the design too complicated and crowded.  Possibly just give it the ability to use Glare and be done with it.

Atlas caterpillars and chrysalises aren’t all that exciting to look at, so it’s probably best to take a bit of artistic license with them, and fit them in with however the final form ends up looking.

VikingBoyBilly asks:

Why is azurill so screwed up? In gen 6 they had a chance to fix it, and all they did was make it normal/fairy. umm, what? Most of what’s wrong with azurill is obvious, but one tidbit I think is less than well known is it can’t get aqua jet, making it better to breed marills instead.

For the benefit of other readers: I’m pretty sure what Billy is referring to is Azurill’s gender… issues.  Marill and Azumarill, who were second-generation Pokémon, have a standard gender ratio – half of them are male and half are female.  Someone on the programming team evidently forgot about this when Azurill was added in the third generation, because they gave her a skewed gender ratio – only one quarter of all Azurill are male.  This isn’t, in itself, unusual.  Lots of Pokémon are like this – Clefairy and Vulpix, for example – but the gender ratio normally stays the same across evolutions.  Azurill’s doesn’t.  Because of the way the game’s coding determines an individual Pokémon’s gender, this means that one in every three female Azurill will actually become male upon evolving.  You can go and hatch a few Azurill now if you want to see it happen.  No other Pokémon does this.

So I think what you’re basically asking is “why don’t Game Freak change this?  They’ve had three generations to do it” and, well, obviously the answer is because they either haven’t noticed or don’t care.  The former seems unlikely; they don’t exactly pay a lot of attention to the fan community but it’s not like they live under a rock.  So I guess they probably don’t care.  And I don’t think I do either.  It was almost certainly a mistake initially, but it’s an amusing one that makes Azurill unique, and it doesn’t actually break anything in the game.  And, in a way, it makes Ruby and Sapphire among the first ever video games to have a playable transgender character.  Even if it was… y’know… probably by accident.  Is that… bad?  I certainly don’t think so.

Obligatory link to further ramblings on Pokémon gender from the archive.

Anonymous asks:

Vileplume is your favorite Pokemon, right? How do you feel about Bellossom?

Eh, Bellossom is just too happy for my taste.  We were put on this world to experience pain, hardship and death, Bellossom, not sing about how great the damn sun is.

Seriously, though, Bellossom is fine, and I like the weird sun-worship thing that they do, and the way that contrasts with Oddish being mainly a nocturnal Pokémon and having moonlight-related powers.  But I don’t really have any strong opinions on her, one way or the other.

VikingBoyBilly asks:

Why aren’t volbeat and illumise fairy or electric type?

Because they don’t need to be?  Fireflies are real insects that exist in the real world, so there’s not really anything about them that needs to be explained by adding another type.  I mean, sure, I think there are arguments for either of those, or Fire for that matter, but if you wan’t a more specific answer than that I’m afraid you’re going to have to ask Game Freak; I have no special insight here.

Anonymous asks:

If you had the power to make any other Pokemon besides Pikachu the mascot, who would it be? (I would choose Poliwhirl)

You know, I’m honestly not sure that I would.  Pikachu being the mascot, like a lot of other stuff from Pokémon’s early development, kind of happened by accident.  Pokémon didn’t really have a mascot at first; Pikachu gained the spot because of the popularity of the anime, for which he was largely responsible.  But Pikachu being Ash’s starter and the most prominent Pokémon character in the anime was a last-minute change; he was originally supposed to be a Clefairy, and it’s not entirely clear why they made the switch.  Ultimately, he’s the mascot because people love him, and people love him because, objectively, he is adorable as f$%&.  Much as I like to complain about Pikachu spawning a line of irritating knock-offs in subsequent generations, it’s hard to deny that he earned his popularity.  So yeah.  I’d keep Pikachu.

VikingBoyBilly asks:

Why are mamoswine and relicanth not fossils? Also, Relicanth should evolve into a Dunkleosteuss pokemon. Cool idea, no?

Well, the whole point of Relicanth is being based on something that’s actually not extinct but just looks like it should be.  Making Relicanth a fossil would sort of defeat the purpose, in a way.  I mean, you could have Relicanth available as both a fossil and a wild Pokémon, which I think would be a cool way of emphasising its unusual status, but from Game Freak’s perspective, why would you do that?  And would most players actually like that, or would they feel cheated by getting a ‘fossil’ Pokémon that they could just catch normally?  Dunkleosteus… eh.  Sure?  It is again kind of defeating the purpose of Relicanth, but it’s not like evolutionary history in the Pokémon world makes any damn sense anyway.

As for Mamoswine… well, one of the ideas I have about fossil Pokémon is that they’re all Rock-types because Rock-type skeletons are unusually robust, and so representation in the fossil record is overwhelmingly skewed towards Rock Pokémon.  Fossils of prehistoric Pokémon of other types – including Mamoswine – are rare enough that we just never come across them in the games.

Anonymous asks:

If you had the power to mind control Gamefreak employees while they’re brainstorming Pokemon ideas, what would you have them come up with?

Okay, let’s be clear on one thing here; if I had the power to mind-control Game Freak employees at any time at all, I would use it to make them wire all of their company’s money into my US bank account, then high-tail it to Acapulco and never be seen again. Just so that’s clear.

But aside from that, I would probably start by temporarily blocking out all memory of Pikachu and Pikachu’s popularity, because that is the only way I’m ever going to get them to stop making more goddamn cookie-cutter electric rodents.  Then I would compel them to spend hours on end staring at Mediaeval European bestiaries.  Then again, it’s possible they do that already.  It would explain Murkrow startlingly well.