Tag: QandA

Suppose you went over to the dark side because they had cookies. You have your choice to join whichever evil Team you like. Which would it be, and why?

Hmm.  Well, Team Plasma are kind of Ghetsis’ silly brainwashed minions, Teams Aqua and Magma are almost entirely built around a stunning failure to appreciate the basic principles of ecology, and Team Galactic go a little too far for my tastes with their plan to, y’know, destroy the universe, so I suppose I’m going to have to stick to the basics and go with Team Rocket.  They have a sensible goal (money and power, in whatever quantities are achievable), they have no deluded master scheme that would threaten to derail their other plans and/or wipe out modern civilisation, they have a sensible command structure and effective recruiting strategies, and although they lack Team Galactic’s technological supremacy, they’ve still shown they can pull out some fairly impressive scientific expertise when the need arises.  Besides, none of the other teams have an awesome motto.

CHRIS who did you kill for this url

The man who owned it before I did was a profoundly disturbed fellow who used to travel the world with a pointed stick, jabbing people without provocation (hence “poke maniacal”), and post images of his conquests.  He asked me for the time one day while I was in a hurry, so I slew him in single combat using his own pointed stick, stole his wallet, clothes, and identity, sold his children into slavery in a Vietnamese sweatshop, and gave him a Viking funeral.

One could argue that I overreacted but it is a very nice URL.

Why do you ignore Lilligants access to Own Tempo and Petal Dance? It’s one of the only Pokemon that can use a move like that with no consequence!

Because it’s still a bad idea.

The confusion isn’t even really the worst part of moves like Petal Dance, because you can always just switch out.  The trouble is being locked into those moves, and unable to switch out, while they continue.  Dragon-types can get away with using Outrage because so few Pokémon resist Dragon attacks, and even then it’s kind of a gamble.  If you’re using Petal Dance, your opponent basically has a free switch to any of the seven elements that resist Grass attacks (and if Petal Dance keeps going for a third turn and gives the switch-in a chance to set up, you might really be in trouble).

I mean, it’s not useless, but it’s not really good enough that it becomes a better option than Chlorophyll.

I was looking at your review of the Sewaddle family and I noticed that you said you don’t get why Swadloon looks so grumpy, it’s actually a joke that Swadloon is a hikikomori, to evolve it has to be truly happy (I think Gamefreak put that in as an aesop) Leavanny’s Japanese name is even a pun on it!

What did I actually say about Swadloon?  I’m not sure I even remember.  I’ll look it up.

Oh yeah.  Yeah, that’s right.  I didn’t really get it, but I still liked it.  Hmm.  Well, I have no idea what a hikikomori is, but I’ll take your word for it that it makes sense.

Recently ive been thinking about how you don’t like pokemon that step on others toes in terms of design. I, personally, believe they add alot to the pokeverse and here is my reasoning. In the wild, animals have been known to adopt identical traits and natures through evolution simply because it makes them more fit for survival. Looking at the ‘generic normal birds’ they keep adding. In the real world you don’t see one type of bird, they’re dozens upon dozens of species of them. So, to me… 1/2

So I think the second half of this question has been lost in the aether, but there’s enough of it here that I can get the gist of it, don’t you think?

So.  Yes; that is a legitimate point.  I disagree (as, of course, you are aware) but I think it is fair to say that (for example) Pokémon like Pidgey, Spearow, Taillow, Starly and Pidove convey the variety we see even amongst the ‘generic birds’ of the real world, and that this can be called a strength of that design philosophy.  I am inclined to believe, however, that the continued proliferation of ‘generic’ designs like these is simply rather poor prioritisation.  The aim (so far as I can make out) is not to construct a working ecosystem, or a realistic cross-section of the species you actually see in the world; the aim, I think, is to convey the diversity of life, to show how just how weird and amazing some species can be.  Sure, there are thousands of species of birds, but when you already have the pigeon, why would you do the starling and not the cassowary, or the quetzal?

Besides, if we actually try to imitate the spread of species we see in the real world, we’ll wind up with 90% of all Pokémon being Bug-types.

This question has to do with the idea of a Wind Type, or to be more specific… changing Flying to Wind. For me I feel like Flying is a very weird “element” and Wind helps specify what exactly makes a Flying attack different than a Normal attack. And it helps decide what Pokemon actually NEED Wind as a type instead of Flying, as Flying is an overpopulated type. Take Jigglypuff, would you think it would make sense for the Balloon Pokemon to be a Wind Type?

Flying is weird, true.  It seems split into ‘bird’ Pokémon and attacks (Pidgeot, Pelipper, Honchkrow, Drill Peck, Pluck, Brave Bird, etc), ‘wind’ Pokémon and attacks (Drifblim, Jumpluff, Gust, Hurricane, Air Slash, etc), and Pokémon who just happen to be able to fly.  Then of course you have stuff like Dodrio, who is a bird who can’t fly, Flygon, who isn’t a Flying-type because she has two types already, despite being a Pokémon that flies with wings, and Gyarados, who is a Flying-type because he’s based on a kite, even though he cannot fly and, in fact, has no powers related to either wind or flight at all.  In fact, you can see from Missingno.’s data in Red and Blue that there was originally going to be a Bird type, which was apparently scrapped, and I know of at least one Fakemon website which splits the Flying type in this way.  It’s worth noting that, in Red and Blue, Gust was actually a Normal attack, while Whirlwind and Razor Wind still are – what this suggests is that Game Freak initially considered wind-related powers to be ‘unaligned,’ which shows a remarkable shift in their conception of the Flying type when you compare it to Tornadus from Black and White.

The trouble is that I can’t help but imagine Wind would be very small, as it stands.  Although there are several annoying exceptions, most Flying-types appear to be Flying-types because they can fly with wings.  I could definitely see Pidgeot being Wind/Flying instead of Normal/Flying, Jumpluff, as you note, would be a sensible candidate for Grass/Wind (along with Whimsicott?), Tornadus would certainly have to be a Wind-type (but where does that leave Thundurus and Landorus?), Drifblim, Tropius and maybe Mantine, Emolga and Sigilyph should go in there, but that seems to be about it, as far as I can see.  Shiftry is a possibility but you’d have to think long and hard about whether his wind powers are really more important than the characteristics that make him Grass/Dark.  I’m inclined to disagree with you on Jigglypuff, simply because she doesn’t actually have any wind powers at all; she just happens to be light enough to float on the wind.  Gyarados presents a similar problem, though I’d probably stick him into Wind for the hell of it.  Pokémon like Crobat, Gliscor, Vespiquen and Ledian, who aren’t birds but have no strong connection with Wind either, probably have to stay in Flying.

Like eliminating the Ground type, this is, in the end, something that I probably would have done if I’d been mucking around with Pokémon since its inception but wouldn’t really want to do now unless I were intent on completely ripping the games to pieces and starting practically from scratch.

Anonymous asks:

Wow, really loving all your articles and posts! That’s awesome that you like the Grass type; they don’t get enough love. But I gotta know: what’s your opinion on the Ground type in general? For the longest time it’s been my favorite (but that might be nostalgia talking since I used to love Sandshrew when I was 8). Now that I’ve looked over some of your posts about Pokemon designs….I do notice Ground has a lot of rather generic looking desert animals with no particular extraordinary powers, lol

Ground… Ground is sort of odd because, aside from Normal, it’s the element with the fewest proper defining characteristics.  Many of them are either subterranean or desert creatures – and let us note that these are two extremely different things, and that there is really no reason to clump them together while separating Rock.  This seems to be the deal for most Ground-type attacks, but not all Ground Pokémon are anything like this.  What, for instance, makes Marowak a Ground-type?  What makes Garchomp a Ground-type, other than having the Sand Veil ability (which is shared by Cacturne)?  What makes Nidoking and Nidoqueen Ground-types?  You mention Sandshrew, and I think perhaps it is worth noting that, as of his introduction in Red and Blue, Sandshrew never actually learned any Ground attacks on his own – Sand Attack being considered a Normal-type attack at the time, which really makes you wonder why they labelled Sandshrew a Ground-type in the first place.  In Gold and Silver, of course, Sand Attack became Ground-type, but the newly introduced Sandstorm was a Rock-type attack, and has been ever since.  The first Sand Stream Pokémon, Tyranitar, was a Rock-type also.  Sort of makes you wonder why other sand Pokémon, and the sand-based attacks introduced in Ruby and Sapphire, didn’t follow suit.  The only thing I can think of that they all have in common is that they live on the ground, and even that goes out the window when you encounter bloody Gligar and his nonsensical Ground/Flying type.  It might be instructive, furthermore, to question why Kangaskhan, Dunsparce and Stoutland, to name a few, are not Ground-types.

I’m honestly not sure Ground really needs to be a type at all.  It has very little in the way of thematic unity or purpose, and if I had been doing this ten years ago I might have suggested eliminating it entirely and splitting all of its belongings between Rock and Normal (although this would happen at the price of making Normal even larger and more nebulous than it is already).  You asked for my opinion on the Ground type, and I suppose I’ve given it… I don’t really ‘get’ it.  This is not to say that individual Ground-type Pokémon are poorly designed; some of them are, of course, but others are amazing.  It’s just that the type as a whole is such a vague and, frankly, poorly thought-out idea that they don’t really have anything in common as a group.  Is it really necessary to have two ‘miscellaneous’ types?