Do you think the pokemon breeding mechanics should be retconned into producing the lowest evolutionary form of either parent instead of just the mother’s, or are they satisfactory to you as of now?

I’m good with them as they are now.  If you imagine Pokémon breeding as being biologically analogous to real-world animal reproduction (which, of course, is not a given, but let’s assume for the sake of argument), then the young will likely develop inside the body of the female – even if they’re in eggs, it still makes sense that they will follow the basic form of the female parent.  In terms of game mechanics, too, there is a good reason – at present, there is a division between male and female of the things the child receives from its parents: species and (if applicable) Dream World ability from the mother, egg moves from the father.  If you make species inheritable from the father, then that’s another dimension of things you have to watch out for when trying to breed egg moves onto a Pokémon – not only do you have to get the nature and ability you want, preferably with solid stats, the children might not even be the right species!

Anonymous asks:

I’ve recently noticed that the way GameFreak hands out moves is often… skewed. They will deprive a Pokemon of a move that fits its flavour perfectly, while giving another move to another Pokemon because HEY, WHY NOT? For example contrast Blissey learning Stealth Rock(WTF?) to Ninjask not learning ExtremeSpeed(His speed is all they talk about in the dex; I would have thought giving him a mlve that requires, y’know, SPEED would be a no- brainer). Thoughts?

Ninjask lacking Extremespeed is actually something I can get behind, since all Extremespeed really does is allow a Pokémon to move first – something Ninjask can almost always do on his own anyway.  In general, though… Here’s an old rant which might amuse you. Continue reading “Anonymous asks:” →

Do you think it’d be interesting to see items like repels have use in battle? Like, repels could lower the accuracy of physical moves.

Apologies to whoever asked this question (and the other two I’m about to answer) which I received about a month ago, just before I stopped posting… Anyway.

Well… to be honest, I’m not sure what it would add.  Using items in battle isn’t a new thing (potions, X attack, etc.), so it’s not really adding a new dimension to the game, and repels are useful anyway.  Also, apart from repels and escape ropes, I can’t really think of anything you could expend on an in-battle effect that wouldn’t be much more valuable out of battle: Heart Scales and shards are too important for learning moves; stones and fossils are too rare to waste; held items like Leftovers or Choice Specs will be far more useful in the long run if you keep them for your Pokémon to use – you get the idea.  All in all, it just seems like a fairly inconsequential change.

If I Were In Charge: Arm in arm, we’ll win the fight; it’s always been our dream

Right.  I’m in America.  I have an apartment.  With a bed.   And food.  Good.  I have just over a month until X and Y are released, promptly making this entire series quite obsolete, and three planned articles left.  That seems like a perfectly reasonable timeline.  On with the show!

Now, where was I?

Red and Blue.  Gold and Silver.  Ruby and Sapphire.  Diamond and Pearl.  Black and White.  Pokémon games, as a matter of tradition, come in pairs.  The games’ storylines are broadly very similar; the essential difference is in the Pokémon that are available in each one – generally, each game will have perhaps five or six Pokémon of the current generation that are missing from the other.  The obvious purpose is to encourage trading; it’s impossible to complete the Pokédex on a single game, so one must enlist the help of friends (this is, of course, the intention; for the purposes of this discussion we will leave firmly aside the stereotype of the lonely Pokémon trainer who buys two consoles and both versions to trade with him or herself).  These days, with so many legacy Pokémon scattered across so many different games, one questions whether this is actually necessary; it is almost impossible by this point to complete the entire national Pokédex even with three or four different games at one’s disposal (the handful of deliberately omitted Pokémon seeming but a minor speed bump in comparison) completing the regional Pokédex only requires one to see all of the local species anyway, plenty of Pokémon still need to be traded to evolve, and there are no shortage of other multiplayer functions to reward playing with friends, which will doubtless continue to proliferate.  I would go so far as to suggest that the concept of paired games, as originally intended, is obsolete.  However, the games have been evolving.  Pairs of Pokémon games aren’t just about trading so you can get a Bellsprout anymore – the tradition of pairing has almost become a part of the medium, something that later games have been using to make a point.  Can this concept continue to be relevant and beneficial even when its original purpose has become almost meaningless?

Continue reading “If I Were In Charge: Arm in arm, we’ll win the fight; it’s always been our dream” →

So, things are happening

Okay, I know this is not an ideal time for something like this, just when I’m on a roll with the ‘if I were in charge’ thing, but my life is going to be pretty hectic over the next couple of weeks.  This is because I am fleeing the country.  In just over a week, I am leaving New Zealand, pretty much for the foreseeable future, and going to Ohio to start my PhD.  I am doing this because the Americans possess ludicrous sums of money, which they have offered to share with me if I will do their bidding for six years.  Obviously this is going to cut down just a little bit on my blog writing time.  I am hoping to get one more entry up before I leave, but, well, we’ll see.  The last two in that series, and any retrospective which I may or may not do, will have to wait.  Beyond that… well, I certainly have no plans at the moment to give this up, but… y’know, PhD, presumably a lot of work; things are probably going to get slower rather than faster.  Just a heads up.

If I Were In Charge: Come with me; the time is right – there’s no better team

When you jump into a new Pokémon game, your first point of contact is invariably your starter Pokémon – often, in fact, before you even play the game; the starters always get a lot of publicity before the games themselves are released, and plenty of people choose their starters well in advance of the release date (as for me, my permanent love affair with the Grass type makes Chespin pretty much non-negotiable for when I first play X or Y).  For many of us, the starters are what defines a game’s character; on-and-off fans may decide whether or not to buy a game based on the designs of the starters, some players go so far as to use only their starters for battle with a couple of utility Pokémon on the side, and Charizard’s flame still sparks nostalgia in people who last played Pokémon in the 1990’s.  This makes them very powerful ideas, and Game Freak, bless their little hearts, know that, which is why the starters have for a long time now been some of the most intensely scrutinised Pokémon of the lot during the pre-release design process, second only to plot-relevant legendary Pokémon.  I spent a great deal of time early last year discussing the starter Pokémon of the past and present; I will refer you in particular to the last entry in that series, which discussed many of the concepts I’ll continue to play with now, though hopefully I’ll pin down something a bit more concrete today, given the nature of this series.  Now, without further ado – how would I handle starter Pokémon in this hypothetical game I imagine myself directing?

Continue reading “If I Were In Charge: Come with me; the time is right – there’s no better team” →

Do you think rapid spin should be stronger, have its strength increase when it blows away an entry hazard, and be learnable by almost every flying type? (Yes, this is my idea to try to counter the over-use of stealth rock in competitive play)

Well, this would aim to weaken entry hazards in general, and it’s not really entry hazards that are the problem.  I don’t think anyone really believes that Spikes or Toxic Spikes are over the top; it’s only Stealth Rock that’s particularly controversial, partly because it takes only one turn to set up, partly because it so dramatically tips the odds against any Pokémon vulnerable to Rock attacks (that is, Flying-, Bug-, Ice- and Fire-types).  Honestly, I think the best fix (assuming that straight up eliminating Stealth Rock is out of the question, which I suspect it is) would be to add more entry hazards, with different elemental properties, which cannot be used in conjunction with Stealth Rock (the attack just fails if there’s a set in place already).  Add, for instance, Grass- and Fire-type versions (let’s call them, say, Vine Trap and Burst Mine) – with three alternatives in play, the impact of each individual one will be lessened, and instead of four types being victimised, there will be nine that have to watch their backs.  Of course, anything dealing with type dynamics is difficult to go into in detail, when we know we’re going to have a new type thrust upon us soon…

Do you have any personal opinions on how the Pokemon anime shall end?

Shall or should?

Quite honestly, I don’t think they have any plans for it to ever end.  As long as they keep making new Pokémon, they’ll need to introduce them in the anime, and continuing to make new Pokémon is pretty much the heart of Game Freak’s business model.  They’ve shown that they don’t care about Ash being in a state of general stasis with regards to his personal development (not to mention his age), and they certainly don’t care about recycling plots (compare, for instance, the Johto episode All That Glitters with the more recent Dancing With the Ducklett Trio, or Charmander’s backstory with Tepig’s), although, to be fair, the newer versions are often improvements.

If the anime ever ends, it will be because they ran out of money.  We can only pray that someone will have the presence of mind to write some sort of conclusion for the last few episodes.

I know that your a collage student and on a completely random but have you ever read the Percy Jackson books, I only ask because you seem to love mythology and it does a decent job combining modern life with mythology.

The Percy Jackson series is something of a guilty pleasure of mine.  I know it’s sort of supposed to be for children and teenagers, but- wait a minute, this is my Pokémon blog; I don’t have to justify myself on this.  I love the author’s exhaustive use of just about every mythological figure in all of classical literature, and his often hilarious interpretations thereof.  As a classicist, reading those books is pretty much one big long stream of “I see what you did there.“