Pokemon moves are mostly unrealistic with the exception of things like tackle and body slam; however, in some cases there is a basic kind of “physics” to them, at least for the pokemon world. What I’m trying to ask is… are there any attacks you like the concepts of in how they’re performed and by what? Likewise are there any you particularly don’t like? example: I like moonlight, using affiliation with the moon for energy,but I don’t like how surf just conjures a wave out of nothing.

Honestly, I kinda think that trying to explain specific moves is asking for trouble. There’s such a massive variety of attacks, almost all of which are available to many different Pokémon, that you’re bound to get stuff that’s absolutely ludicrous when you stop to think about it. Surf conjuring a wave out of nothing is a bit strange, but really it’s an extension of the way Water moves in general conjure water out of nothing (there’s no way a Squirtle can have enough water inside his own body to sustain a Water Gun for more than a few seconds). And I don’t think anyone knows how Baton Pass is supposed to work.

In general, I like moves that are relatively exclusive, because those are the ones that have a very specific meaning in terms of the nature of a Pokémon’s powers. Signature moves, obviously, but also stuff like Moonlight, as you mentioned, or Morning Sun, which have some nice flavour connotations for the sources of energy a Pokémon uses (Morning Sun, for instance, is a far more exclusive technique than Synthesis and is connected with Pokémon like Espeon, Togetic and Volcarona, suggesting that Pokémon who use it are drawing on sunlight for energy in a far more abstract, ‘magical’ sense than Pokémon who use Synthesis). Aura Sphere is another, which implies a connection with some sort of ‘soul energy’ or whatever you want to call it.

Conversely, it’s the moves that are the most widely available that tend to bug me, because those are the ones that are most likely to belong to Pokémon who have no business using them. Everyone brings up Focus Punch, which is available to a couple of clearly armless Pokémon like Togekiss, but my personal favourite is Aerial Ace. Now, yes, I know Aerial Ace is supposed to be a reference to an old Japanese sword move, the ‘turning swallow cut,’ but 1. it’s a Flying-type attack, 2. the only Pokémon who learn it by levelling are bird Pokémon (and… er… Heracross… for some reason… although Heracross can actually fly), and 3. whether you imagine it requiring flight or not, it carries connotations of extreme speed. Aerial Ace is available to a number of Pokemon who blatantly cannot fly and, in some cases, weigh hundreds of kilograms, including Tyranitar, Ursaring, Tangrowth, Metagross, Nidoqueen (but not Nidoking, so clearly they thought it was particularly appropriate to Nidoqueen for some reason), Slaking (!), Aggron (!!?), Maractus, Groudon, Armaldo, Bouffalant, Stoutland, Registeel (but not Regirock or Regice, so again they must have thought that this was an especially good move for Registeel in particular), Crustle (?), Ferrothorn (?!) and, of all things, Slowbro (but, once again for reasons beyond my comprehension, not Slowking, so someone must have thought at some point “what can we give Slowbro to emphasise the differences between him and Slowking? Oh; I know, AERIAL ACE.”).

The last person’s question got me thinking. How would you feel if pokemon included timed hits in its turn-based mechanics, like in the Mario RPG and Paper Mario series. I personally wouldn’t mind if it included the option to turn it off, but I’d imagine a lot of fans might find this uncomfortable. Your thoughts?

In case anyone doesn’t know what this question is talking about, ‘timed hits’ are a system that gives a boost in power to a move if the player manages to tap a button at exactly the right point in the attack animation.

It sort of has the feel of ‘change for the sake of change,’ which I try to avoid if I can. You seem to be starting by asking whether it would make the game worse in any respect, which I think is the wrong way of going about it. Start by asking what it does to improve the game. If the answer is “nothing” or “very little” then trying to tweak it so it doesn’t make the game worse is a waste of time anyway. If the best we can say of a change is that we “wouldn’t mind” then it’s not a change that’s worth making.

As to timed hits in particular… I think the main draw to including a system like this would be that it creates an impression of trainer participation in battles. Your presence and your precise instructions, given as the battle unfolds, are actually allowing your Pokémon to be more effective than it would be if it were fighting on its own.

The downside is that we’re adding an additional dimension to the gameplay which requires completely different skills. It raises the ceiling for the power your Pokémon are able to reach, but makes that ceiling easier for some players to reach than others. At the highest levels of competitive play, it slants the game’s balance towards offensive strategies. At lower levels, it makes things more unpredictable and random, allowing reaction times to influence outcomes at the expense of strategy. You could include an option to turn the system off, true, but then you’ve got to use some kind of difficulty adjustment for the in-game battles to compensate for the fact that Pokémon with timed hits active are going to be hitting significantly harder.

The bottom line, for me, is that the only potential advantages I can see for this are in the way the game ‘feels’ and the way trainers’ relationships with their Pokémon are portrayed. There are better ways of doing exactly the same thing without messing around with the battle system, which won’t run the risk of messing up the game balance. It’s a mechanical change that doesn’t actually improve the game mechanics, so I’d be inclined to stay away from it.

I was recently thinking how unfair it was that water was one of the more popular types, but doesn’t get its own status condition. I mean fire gets burn, electric gets paralysis, ice gets freeze, poison gets, well, poison, psychic gets sleep, and grass seems to cover most of the others in one way or another. So how about the “wet” status? It slows the victim down, makes it less evasive, and increases the damage of electric type moves. Rain will also give it to every non-water type. Thoughts?

Do you really think that’s necessary?

I mean… there are seventeen types. Five of them are associated with status conditions. Honestly, I’d kinda dispute associating sleep with Psychic; there’s only one Psychic-type sleep-inducing move, while Grass and Normal have three each, not counting Relic Song). Electric with paralysis is a little off too, since there are actually quite a few non-electrical sources of paralysis like Glare and Body Slam. Why single out Water as needing to have an associated status condition?

Besides, Water is already a powerful element, and Rain is already a powerful field effect. There’s no need to make them both stronger by linking them with an effect that dramatically increases a team’s ability to use devastating moves like Blizzard and Thunder.

I am very confused on the Poison Type… I like Nidoran for example, a mammal with poisonous hairs for protection… It makes sense. I don’t like Muk or Weezing because they’re built off waste, which isn’t poisonous, it’s just unhealthy. Why are Bulbasaur and Bellsprout part poison? What’s poisonous about them? Why would Zubat want to be poisonous when he thrives on leeching the blood off living hosts? I understand Steel resisting an Arbok’s bite, but why resist Acid? What IS the Poison Type?

Few of these things are as problematic as you seem to be suggesting.

Go go gadget Oxford English Dictionary.

Poisonous, adjective. (Of a substance or plant) causing or capable of causing death or illness if taken into the body. (Of an animal) producing poison as a means of attacking enemies or prey; venomous.

Waste can, in fact, be poisonous. Many kinds of waste are conducive to the spread of disease as well as being poisonous, but they are still quite poisonous on their own – that is, the chemical properties of the substance itself are damaging to health, irrespective of the presence of any disease-causing organisms. Bulbasaur and Bellsprout (and Oddish) are Poison-types because they, too, are poisonous, as many real plants are. If you eat them, you will get sick and possibly die. Zubat can happily use poison because most animals (and plants) are immune to their own poisons (incidentally, vampire bats are actually poisonous/venomous – their saliva stops blood from congealing in the same way as a mosquito’s bite; this is technically a venomous effect). Snakes, likewise, can pump an animal full of venom and then suffer no ill effects when they eat it afterwards.

Acid, on the other hand, is a problem. Many acids are in fact poisons as well, but it seems clear that the attack, Acid, causes damage by virtue of being an acid – that is, the substance your Pokémon is producing has corrosive properties because it is, chemically speaking, what’s called a ‘proton donor.’ Metals, generally speaking, do not like acids. Most metals, when exposed to a strong acid, will react to form salts. Salts, as the name might suggest, are very much less robust than metals. Unless they’re all plated with a very inert metal like gold, Steel-types should not like Acid any more than other Pokémon do.

Honestly, I think this is just because the designers didn’t think it through in this much detail. If it were up to me, I would say that Acid should be a Water attack with a chance to cause a burn, but unfortunately that’s what Scald does. I guess the only reasonable in-universe explanation is that Steel-types have all developed extremely high resistance to corrosion, maybe by including a very thin layer of something like chromium in their skins, which is why they don’t rust either.

Rereading your entry on Stunfisk, a thought just hit me: you said “and it would actually make sense because he’d no longer be an aquatic Pokémon with a weakness to Water!” in regards to Stunfisk not having Water Absorb. This got me thinking: do you think ‘water’ is the same as ‘Water-type’? I mean, Water Pokémon damage from Water moves, but many live in the water nonetheless. So the question is this: is the water in Water attacks the same as the water in the oceans/rivers/lakes?

The entry, for those who are interested: http://pokemaniacal.tumblr.com/post/17760688728/stunfisk

Well, it’s true that most Water Pokémon do still take damage from Water attacks, but they do resist it. In much the same way, all Pokémon take at least some damage from Gust and Air Slash. I do think that Water attacks are, for the most part, using ordinary water (there are a few exceptions; clearly Bubblebeam is more than just bubbles, but trying to explain specific attacks is just asking for trouble) and that the damage is primarily in the force with which they fire it; for most Pokémon, it’s the impact of a Water Gun that’s doing the damage, not the water itself. For Pokémon that are weak to Water, obviously there’s no reason the water should be physically hitting them harder, so it seems likely that they are in some sense vulnerable to water as a substance. Fire Pokémon, obviously, do not take kindly to being dampened. As to the other two types, Ground and Rock… I vaguely recall reading a fan-fic once which suggested that Ground- and Rock-types possess a sort of exoskeleton made of a porous ceramic material, which can absorb a lot of damage (hence their traditionally high physical defence) but can become waterlogged, slowing them down and taxing their energy.

In short, I think that a Pokémon who is neutral to Water attacks simply takes damage from the crushing force of the water hitting it, while a Pokémon who is actually weak to Water attacks is somehow harmed by water itself, and has no business living an aquatic lifestyle.

I remember you mentioning how you have big ideas for changing the Type system and wanted to hear your opinion on my idea for a new type mechanic. I have this idea into changing the big group of Types into Biological Type and Elemental Type. Bio types would be things like bug, dragon or ghost while element types would be the water, fire, poison, etc… each pokemon would have 1 of each, not 2 of one or the other. Pikachu for example would become a beast/electric or mammal/electric. Thoughts?

Tricky…

I think the difficulty is that a lot of Pokemon that already exist belong to two types that would fall under a single category in your system. What happens to Shedinja? It doesn’t make any sense for him to be not a Bug-type, or not a Ghost-type; the concept just doesn’t allow it. Do you keep Grass an an elemental type, or use Plant as a biological one? You’re in trouble with either Sawsbuck or Abomasnow. Psychic causes similar problems. And what about Pokémon that just plain don’t have any elemental powers, like Raticate?

Besides, the egg group system already provides something like this. It doesn’t play into strategy at all, but why should it need to? Why should a Pokémon’s strengths and weaknesses be different depending on whether it’s a mammal or a reptile?

I think that the biggest objection, though, is that it says “no” in advance to a lot of possible designs for no real reason. Why can’t we have a Pokémon with both ice and electrical powers? Why can’t we have a Pokémon that’s a fusion of a mammal and a bird (gryphons, anyone?)? What reason is there to deny designers that option?

What do you think are the best and worst pokemon spinoffs?

Well, to be honest, I’ve only played three of them – Mystery Dungeon Blue, Pokémon Ranger, and the old Gameboy Colour version of the trading card game. Er… I guess I thought the best of those was Pokémon Ranger, and the worst was the TCG? I enjoyed all of them, though. Ranger had some interesting game mechanics that the main series could learn a lot from, and made good use of the partner Pokémon, while Mystery Dungeon is just an inherently fun concept (could have done a lot more work on their world building, though). I only put the TCG at the bottom because the premise was a little nonsensical – I mean, it was a game that was actually about playing the card game, and you could travel around the country challenging these, like, trading card gyms, and there was a professor in your home town who studied the trading card game in this huge lab full of expensive machines, and…

…I gotta get me an emulator of that s#!t.

Did you know about the interview in which the GameFreak higher-ups talk about how they have ideas like making the starter selection 5 Pokémon instead of 3, with types like Bug, Poison or Steel in there, but they always end up sticking to the formula because, in the end, it’s what works best for new players?

I did not; do you have a link or a source or something I could look at?

It is certainly a legitimate point; I discuss this issue (among others) in this entry.

I saw someone make a comment on one of your posts that sparked my interest. What exactly do you think a “type” is. In reference to pokemon AND moves (i mean like, why is flash cannon steel?)

…damnit; I was hoping no-one would ask that.

Okay. So. What the hell is a type, anyway? This is… tricky. Let’s look at a couple of Flying-types to illustrate some of the problems here. Dodrio is a Flying Pokémon because he has birdlike physiology, even though he can’t actually fly, while Drifblim is a Flying Pokémon because he can fly, despite having nothing in common with Dodrio, physiologically speaking. They share the properties we associate with the Flying type, though – weaknesses to cold and electrical damage, for example. What this suggests is that types are actually just a set of categories created and defined by humans, and used to describe the sets of strengths and vulnerabilities Pokémon possess in battle. That is, Dodrio and Drifblim are both considered Flying-types because they have those common strengths and vulnerabilities – even though they have them for completely different reasons. What’s a little awkward about this is that the system is so perfect. With few exceptions – namely, those Pokémon with abilities like Levitate and Thick Fat that alter their defensive capabilities with respect to specific elements – the strengths and weaknesses of all the Pokémon that are known to exist fit perfectly into the type system. It is possible, for instance, to make complicated predictive statements like “any Pokémon that resists both Lava Plume and Dragon Rush will cease to resit one or both of them after exposed to either Gastro Acid or Worry Seed.” With our privileged out-of-universe knowledge, we can predict with quite a high degree of confidence that a statement like this will always be true, even though there may be many Pokémon in the universe that we don’t know about yet. What this suggests is that type is (or describes) real properties which can be objectively measured, and which are common to all Pokémon of a given type.

So which is it?

I think we can probably agree that a shared type does not necessarily imply shared ancestry – that is, there is no ‘common ancestor’ of all Dark Pokémon, for instance; Absol and Mandibuzz are more closely related to other Pokémon in the Field and Flying egg groups, respectively, than they are to each other. Eevee, I think, has to be the clincher to this, since she demonstrates conclusively that there can be a Fire Pokémon (Flareon) who is much more closely related to a Water Pokémon (Vaporeon) than to any other Fire-type. It follows, therefore, that any traits which members of a single type have in common are the result of convergent evolution (like bats, birds and butterflies, they have physiological traits or abilities that are outwardly similar and serve common purposes, but actually function differently at their most basic level). This is less true for some types than for others – for instance, Bug, Dragon, Flying and Grass all map quite closely onto corresponding egg groups, so one imagines that for many of them, their shared traits actually do indicate shared ancestry, but these types are exceptions (as is proven by the outliers within those types, like Flygon, who is a Dragon Pokémon, but is a member of the Bug egg group and not the Dragon egg group). This seems to provide more support to the idea that ‘type’ is actually a human idea used purely to describe the way a Pokémon fights.

I am rather inclined, at this point, to suggest that type is a human construct that doesn’t necessarily have any impact on the way Pokémon live their lives in the wild but is a useful way of simplifying the complex web of interactions between various powers and abilities that make one Pokémon more effective against another but less effective against a third. That still leaves us with the question of why Dodrio and Drifblim share so many apparent tactical strengths and vulnerabilities when they seem to have nothing in common, and for that I have only the unconvincing answer of “coincidence.” In the case of the more supernatural elements, like Psychic and Ghost, you could easily argue that two Pokémon from the same type have independently evolved to draw power from a common source, and that the nature of these sources inherently renders attacks and protections drawing upon one of them more or less effective against those that draw upon another. This works as a general explanation to the extent that all Pokémon are in some sense magical (I think you would be hard-pressed to find one that has no access to any supernatural powers at all) however it seems awfully like simply giving up on the question, and it is besides much less convincing for the more mundane types, especially Normal, which is defined mainly by its lack of any unifying characteristics. At present, though, I’m afraid I’m unable to give any fuller answer.

Hello, I’m a BIG fan of your blog. I love it. Anyways, I’ve been contemplating about Pokemon fans wanting a game with all of the regions in it. Though it sounds pretty cool, would this be too much? What’s your opinion on it?

Hmm. Well, simply put, it would be a massive project. The sheer scale of it would make it utterly different to everything Pokémon has done before, as well as extremely difficult, and would necessitate throwing out a lot of the established gameplay and storyline conventions. As cool as it would be, I think that such a mammoth project would be impractical for a cartridge game, and that the details would suffer as the designers attempted to cram everything in. Now, for something like an MMORPG, it might be more practical, but to my knowledge Game Freak have never expressed any interest in MMO Pokémon (besides, I just plain don’t like MMORPGs). Maybe for a strategy game it could work? But no, for a traditional Pokémon game, I just don’t see it happening, and I think the attempt would likely be ruinous.