I think levitation should be a separate property of a pokemon instead of an ability. In theory, there would be an icon on the pokemon’s stat screen of a cloud or something to show you it’s hovering by default. Game Freak have already done this by making charizard x usable in sky battles. Magnezone and Bronzong would be awesome because they’ll have fireproof and magnet pull while being immune to earthquake and Flygon could keep arena trap!

Hrrm. It makes sense, of course, but it does also mean we’re giving those Pokémon ‘something for nothing,’ so to speak – they don’t gain any of the weaknesses associated with the Flying type, and they don’t have to give over their ability slot for it. A niggling little part of my mind keeps saying “wait, that’s not fair; nothing else in the game works like that,” and that part of my mind wants Levitate to have some disadvantage associated with it, if we have it work like this – like maybe Levitating Pokémon are immune to Ground attacks, but also gain a weakness to Flying attacks, to illustrate that true Flying Pokémon are naturally more comfortable in the air than they are. I think I’d be okay with that.

You must have heard the news about Mega Rayquaza being so overpowered that Smogon banned him from Ubers and created the Anything Goes tier. Any thoughts on this? Do you think that power creep is becoming harmful?

I have heard no such news, because I live under a rock with a stack of books.

But really, good lord. You’re telling me they finally managed to make something that broke the Uber tier? The metagame that was perfectly content with pre-Drizzle-nerf Kyogre? That Uber tier?

I think power creep is a legitimate concern. The problem is that, given the way Pokémon works as a franchise, Pokémon get more stuff every generation, and very rarely have anything taken away from them (even the loss of moves taught using TMs or move tutors is often temporary). It’s very rare for a Pokémon to actually become objectively inferior to a previous version of itself – which means that Pokémon who don’t get much attention or whose design doesn’t justify cool new powers easily will just get steadily weaker and weaker relative to everything else that’s going on around them, and often those are Pokémon who were pretty terrible to begin with. Farfetch’d scores more critical hits now! And also Mega Pinsir exists so f$#% you, Farfetch’d. Now, Pokémon has never really cared about game balance anyway, so to that extent you can sort of just say “eh; screw it,” and more to the point it’s probably impossible to balance something as old, vast and heterogeneous as Pokémon without ripping the whole thing apart and basically building a new game from scratch (I mean, if you want an example of how hard it is to create balance that satisfies everybody, take a peek at the Starcraft II forums some time; they have people whose full-time job is making balance tweaks, and there are only like 50 different units in the whole game, but two-thirds of the forums is just people screaming about how obviously and horrifically broken they think the game is – and these people are the fans, or at least I think they are). On the other hand, it sucks when your favourite Pokémon is one that’s just objectively not very good. Vileplume is my favourite Pokémon and the truth is that Vileplume is terrible compared to a lot of other Grass-type supporters like Venusaur and Ferrothorn. And yes, you can say “well, no, you have to look at Vileplume in its proper context, which is the NU tier,” but the unavoidable fact is that the existence of tiers is the result of the fanbase bending over backwards to do something that most other franchises would regard as the developers’ job, and the tremendous volume of hatred that gets inflicted on the poor Starcraft II balance team is instead pointed at bloody Smogon.

Basically what I’m getting at is that whether power creep is harmful sort of ties into the question of whether you think game balance in Pokémon is desirable or even possible, and we are not even close to answering that one…

What do you think of the decision to make TMs reusable?

I sort of think we were on the way there anyway. A lot of the best TMs could be bought repeatedly from various shops, game corners and battle areas across different games, and really any TM is reusable if you breed for it (it’s just sort of unfairly discriminatory to genderless Pokémon). In most cases, you could already get around the fact that TMs were limited-use – it was just boring and time-consuming some of the time. I’m okay with things not being boring and time-consuming.

Since you are a major fan of Grass Pokemon, and how a lot of Grass types fall into the same pitfalls, what are some things you might do to existing ones if given the opportunity to renovate them to make them more unique and powerful? I’m thinking primarily about a lot of the NU grass types like Bellossom, Cherrim, Victreebel, Carnivine and of course Vileplume

I think this has been sitting in my in-box for quite some time now. I had a hectic week or three. Sorry about that. But now I’m sitting in the Houston airport for like four hours and have time to work through this rather menacing backlog of questions, so whatevs.

I think I had a question *like* this earlier in the year regarding changes to the type as a whole… yeah, here it is. I think I might add to that a suggestion that maybe Solarbeam, having been charged up once, could fire repeatedly without charging again for as long as the Pokémon in question remained in play; that might make it somewhat more viable, particularly outside of dedicated sun teams.

Anyway, to the specific Pokémon… there are sort of quite a lot of them to give individualised answers to… but I can talk about Vileplume to give you an idea of the kind of direction I might take, because Vileplume is my favourite Pokémon. Vileplume is actually on the up and up already in generation six. X and Y, you may have noticed, kindly gifted her with some extra points in special attack, which helps a lot; I think a little more HP as well would not be out of the question, but I’m not going to make a fuss about it. Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby also seem to have given Oddish (though not Gloom) Moonblast on her level-up list, and Moonblast kicks the living cr@p out of every other special coverage attack Vileplume has ever had (i.e. Tri Attack via Nature Power) as well as making good thematic sense, so that’s wonderful. Anyway, what more can we do? Giving a boost to Effect Spore, which is her Dream World ability, would help a lot, because as it stands Effect Spore is a terrible ability (a 30% chance to inflict a status condition, which you can’t choose, if you’re hit by a contact attack = at best a 10% chance of being useful), and her only other ability (Chlorophyll) is a really great ability for a sweeper, which Vileplume emphatically is not. Let’s maybe say instead that Effect Spore could give perfect accuracy to ‘powder’ moves (Sleep Powder, Stun Spore, Poisonpowder, Spore, Rage Powder, Cotton Spore and Powder) and lets them bypass Protect and Substitute. If we really wanted to mix things up we could throw in a signature move – maybe ‘Allergen’ or something – that causes paralysis and confusion. That would be nasty.

I’ve been trying to think of ways to make ice types more viable, since I’ve always loved ice types but never used them due to their glaring weaknesses, and I’ve been thinking about what resistances/immunities they could be given in future gens to make them better. I’ve been thinking resistances to water, bug, grass, flying, (possibly) fairy and (possibly) normal. Thoughts?

Resistance to Water I can get behind; ice is water, it makes as much sense for Ice-types to resist Water attacks as the reverse. Resistances to Bug and Grass kind of make sense, but those are already among the weakest attack types in the game, as is Normal, and I think getting Ice’s extra resistances from there would cause as many problems as it would solve, if not more. Fairy is really strong as it stands, and I have no problem with taking them down a peg or two, but I’m not really sure of the thematic logic behind letting Ice resist Fairy – I’d much rather give Grass, Bug or even Normal a Fairy resistance. Resistance to Flying is legit; Flying attacks are seeing a lot of use at the moment and it’s consistent with Ice attacks being strong against Flying Pokémon (not 100% sure why that is, exactly, but we can run with it). Honestly I don’t think more than that is necessary. Three resistances (Ice, Flying, Water) isn’t a lot, but it’s not far behind what most other types get, and it keeps Ice as an element that’s relatively weak defensively but makes up for it on offence. I’d be happy with that.

So, it seems in Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, the Latis’ new mega form will allow you to actually fly to places with actual flight controls while viewing the region below you, rather than just warping there after an animation as the hm does. Not only that, this will allow you to reach new places in the game that were out of reach previously, and allows you to capture every non-event legendary pokemon in places called “mirage areas). So, best thing to ever happen to the franchise, or what?

I choose b) – “what.”

I mean, don’t get me wrong; it’s very cool and it’ll certainly do a lot to improve the atmosphere of the games and give people a good feel for what Hoenn is like as a region. Moreover, it certainly isn’t lost on me that people have wanted something like this in Pokémon for a long time! It just doesn’t strike me as a total game changer – you’re using Pokémon to travel to places you couldn’t on your own, which has been a big part of what these games have been about from the beginning; thematically it’s nothing new. I’d actually regard, say, Pokémon Amie or Super Training as much bigger and more important features.

How would you feel about a Pokemon game set in te ancient past? No modern technology, totally different society? The main theme could be the discovery that Pokemon can be revived from fossils! Pokemon +archeology =win?

Well, I’ve always liked the idea of setting a game in the past; I think I’ve talked about it before. I don’t think I see how reviving Pokémon from fossils would fit with that theme, though, since the games have always presented that as a very recent development made possible through modern technology. The idea of setting a Pokémon game in an older version of the world, with a very different social structure, is certainly a big draw; in particular, if you’re working in a period where Pokéballs are a rare curiosity created exclusively by elite artisans, we’re bound to get a very different view of the relationship between humans and Pokémon than what we normally see – or, alternatively, a strikingly similar view that could say some interesting things about how that ideology developed.

Other than that, I think the main attraction of the idea for me is in working out replacements for a lot of the conventional systems that sustain the Pokémon world as we know it – there are no Pokéballs, so everyone has to rely on apricorns; there are probably not a lot of standardised items like potions and revives, so everyone has to use herbal medicine; there’s no PC network, so everyone has to store Pokémon in actual physical locations like farms; there’s no remote communication, so people in other towns have to be contacted by messenger or telepathic Pokémon. The danger is that, in the process of working out all these ‘immersive’ systems, you inadvertently create something that’s just full of annoying chores – things like growing apricorns and preparing herbal medicine have to be parts of the game in themselves, things that can be fun to do and have potential for major rewards, and there need to be as many ‘convenient’ options as can be justified. I’ve often toyed with the idea of a system where you can cross-breed apricorns, gradually gaining access to more and more useful strains that create Pokéballs with all kinds of fun effects – start with just Pale Apricorns, which just work like regular Pokéballs, then find each of the seven standard apricorn colours (blue, red, yellow, green, pink, black and white) and start crossing them together to create things like a Sky Blue Apricorn that’s especially effective against Flying and Levitating Pokémon, or a Deep Violet Apricorn that increases the experience growth of a Pokémon captured in it. Basically, make the players work harder for stuff, but be sure to reward them for it!

I was thinking about phantom force and other two-turned attacks ever since the Phantump and Trevenant article, and I’ve been thinking of a way that could improve all of them and make them much more useful in competitive circles. Instead of these moves being two-turned, how about having the move preparation have high priority, and the move execution have low priority, making them less predictable, and allowing them to dodge moves like they’re supposed to. So, a fair change, or too powerful?

So… as far as I can see, this actually makes Pokémon with Dig, Fly, Phantom Force and the like unbeatable except by Pokémon with (positive or negative) priority attacks of their own, or some kind of recoil ability like Ferrothorn’s Iron Barbs. Step 1: Fly. You automatically move first; you don’t get hit unless your opponent has Mach Punch or whatever and is also faster than you. Step 2: Come down. You automatically move second; you don’t get hit unless your opponent has something really weird like Vital Throw. Step 3: Fly again. You still don’t get hit. Step 4: ??? Step 5: Profit! Your opponent has plenty of free turns in there to switch in whatever they like to resist and counter your attacks, but who cares? You can just pull the exactly same bull$#!t on that Pokémon unless it has a priority attack, or is outright immune (and even that just creates a stalemate).

Anonymous asks:

How do you feel about a “Luck” stat being added, something that can contribute a small boost to critical hits, dodge chance at no evasion stacks, possibly a side effect that works like the move Endure, you get a small chance that an attack that would KO your Pokemon will leave it with 1 HP, but only if it has more than 1 HP. The percent chances of these things would be determined by your opponent’s luck, and could be given to weaker Pokemon like Farfetch’d and Furret

For the most part, I think my reaction to this would be basically analogous to what I said here about the idea of making accuracy and evasion into concrete, trainable stats rather than just bonuses and penalties. More to the point, I’m not sure the effect on Pokémon who would receive high Luck stats would be terribly beneficial, overall – it would encourage a perception of them as Pokémon best suited to inferior players who value luck over skill, and perhaps ultimately lead to even greater marginalisation than they experience now. Luck is always a tricky thing to play with in games of skill and strategy – the possibility of calculated risks for greater payoff is an interesting concept that can make games more varied, but adding too many luck-based elements just makes every move a risk, and then you lose the whole point. It’s… awkward.

How would you feel if in a new generation, Game Freak allowed Pokemon to have more than 2 types? (i.e. Water/Flying/Dragon Gyarados). What are some Pokemon who you could see as having more than two types thematically?

Eh. I feel like dual-types are already stronger than single-types; the extra weaknesses are more often than not balanced by extra resistances, and dual-typed Pokémon generally have more powerful and versatile offensive skills because they have STAB on two elements. Provided you avoid any triple-weaknesses (which wouldn’t be that common; hell, against 1/3 of all attacking types it wouldn’t even be possible), I think triple-typed Pokémon would in general have an unfair advantage – unless you changed some of the games’ other underlying assumptions about type; you could do away with single-typed Pokémon altogether, for instance, adding a second type to all of them, or you could reduce STAB from +50% to (for example) +35% for dual-types and +20% for triple-types. That might make things interesting.

In terms of the idea of it, apart from the mechanics, well, I’d go for it if I thought the two-type limit was a constraint on the designers’ freedom, but I don’t, really. Giving a Pokémon abilities like Levitate or Swift Swim can already convey an affinity for or link with a particular type without having to actually add the type itself. I don’t think we lose anything by not having that option.

Having said that, you did ask, so… Gyarados as Water/Flying/Dragon would make sense, switching to Water/Dark/Dragon upon mega evolution; Flygon could become Dragon/Ground/Flying and swap out Levitate for something else (watch out for those x8 Ice attacks, though); Jirachi I think would make sense as Steel/Psychic/Fairy; Stunfisk really should be Ground/Electric/Water; Yanmega maybe could go to Bug/Flying/Dragon (‘cause, y’know, dragonfly); Dragalge could be Dragon/Poison/Water… there’s probably a few more I’m not thinking of.