No matter where you are on the internet, whatever the fandom is, someone is always going to ask about what you’d do if you were in charge of it. For example, a lot of Bible fans are very convinced that their fanfiction is actually factually true. Whether it’s fantasy Wrestlemanias or ideal outfit compositions in Pretty Little Liars, there’s always an urge to take a thing you already know and make your version of it.
Also, people who like Pokemon routinely talk about what stupid idiots the designers are and how they could do a better job of running the game. I don’t think I could, because I know there are competing factors and I think that everyone who opens their mouth to talk like that sounds like a tool.
Still, if I think those people are silly, it’s easy to say that if I don’t put myself out there, right?
Here! A bunch of opinions about what I think should be done in Pokemon as a game franchise. Nothing like ‘open world matters’, I think the game should always be a competitive 2v2 Bo3 format and the rest of the game can follow from that. I also don’t think that this would make the game better. It’s very important that I put it out there, on my sleeve, that none of these changes are based on deep insight into the game or the way that it should be. No. This is a centering of myself, as a designer, and as a player of games. This is how I want it done. Also note that none of these changes are simple or oblative, like, this isn’t all that I think should happen, there would need to be specific changes and fine tuning for all these pushes.
There, preamble done, here’s how and where I’m right.
Kill the Rock or Steel Type, Don’t Care Which
To me the Rock type feels like it exists because when they were setting up the type chart back in Red-Blue, they figured they’d need something like that, like making sure to sketch out space for a window box while designing a window. But Rock in RBY got to be Ground’s ugly cousin, with its greatest perk (a resistance to normal moves) not proving adequate to the task of dealing with that generation’s overwhelming normal type attacks, and being bolted consistently to something that gave it a quad weakness. In Generation 1, there was one rock type that wasn’t quad-weak to grass, and only three that weren’t quad weak to water as well. In its first appearance, Rock was literally never used on its own, which to me suggests that the type wasn’t actually doing a job. It was a sorta-type, a thing to keep them overwhelming grounders under control, I suppose.
In Gen 2, as if to fix Gen 1, they introduced Steel types, which were uh, like, Rock types but good? They had the ground weakness still, they shared that, but they no longer catastrophically mixed with ground, and Steel had the kind of resistances that made it fit for ‘tough’ Pokemon types. But this brought with it the new problem that now Rock’s old job – a physically tough type of elemental Pokemon type that represented being made out of something inert that wasn’t necessarily stuck to or of the ground – was displaced by something that was just better.
Rock exists in an ugly space between ground and steel, made worse. Steel exists to do Rock’s job, but better. Steel is one of the best types in the game and even brings with it an immunity to a whole wing of status conditions that you want on a tough Pokemon that wants to endure fights. One of these types sucks at doing its job and the other is too good at it and any time you get one of them you probably would be better off if it was just the other.
My druthers, Rock would be Steel, the Steel Type wouldn’t exist and the Rock type would just have the Steel associations, and if that doesn’t make sense for a Pokemon I’d just make it loose the Rock type. Graveller and Golem didn’t get anything being Rock types after all. Oh, Stab on Rock Slide, yeah, woo, that means something.
Get Rid of the Fairy Type
You can admit to your mistakes, just admit it, the Fairy type was an attempt to address the problems of making a bunch of broken dragon types. It has no coherent flavour, and it’s super strong in a way it does not justify.
The Fairy type sucks and it’s so popular and strong it’ll never be properly addressed.
‘Oh but if you got rid of the fairy type, what type would you give the fairies? there’s nothing else that fits’ yeah see what I mean about not having a coherent theme?
Buff the Ice Type
Ice got a ‘sort’ of buff in Scarlet-Violet, in that one of their moves got made worse. Oh, more usable, but it it didn’t actually help Ice. See, Ice Types in Hail get a defense buff, making them better defensively under the new ‘Snow’ condition. This means that now you can run a single Ice type and it gets tougher as long as this snow condition is going on without needing to build your whole team around them the way them. You could include teammates that were immune to Hail without building around a single type, and benefit from the defensive bonus it now grants, which is like the defensive bonus you get from Sandstorm.
Basically, you know that good weather, Sandstorm? Well, rather than Hail, the Bad Sandstorm too much like Sandstorm, it got replaced with Snow, so it’s now the Bad Sandstorm.
Anyway, the Ice type should resist water (turning water that hits it into ice and floating in ice are two good themes there), and Steel should be weak to Ice. No strong reason, just fucking hell, give Ice something to do.
Stop Making Bugs A Dumping Ground
Bug is such a weird type because it’s clearly something that the designers are fond of, something they like, but it’s also a type with almost no meanigful support in the game’s entire history. The list of good, tournament-meaningful bugs starts at Scizor, adds Volcarona and kinda stops there, and that’s a list that’s been about that long since forever. The Bug type is used in the early game to populate early routes invoking things like looking for cicadas as a kid.
But the result is that bugs aren’t treated as a sort of whole type of their own. Bug type moves are typically weak hits, and even though U-Turn is an incredibly important move, it’s never important for being Bug, it’s important because it’s a pivot – a move that lets you transfer in a Pokemon after other attacks. Its potential offensive capacity is irrelevant, and you can tell because as good as U-turn is, it’s showing up on Incineroar – quite possibly the best VGC Pokemon of all time.
There’s no legendary Bug.
There’s never been a Box bug.
There’s exactly one Mythical Bug ever, and it was Genesect.
Fully-evolved bugs have the lowest average stats, and they as a group have the lowest hit points, and special attacks of any group.
Bug as an offensive type is resisted by seven other types, and bug resists three uncommon offensive types – fighting, ground, and grass. It even has a weird thing where Fighting resists Bug and Bug resists fighting, which isn’t something that shows up in other damage types.
The Bug type is a bad type and Bug Pokemon are bad Pokemon because Bug Pokemon aren’t made to be good. The best Bug move is good because it shows up on the Best Pokemon of all time in a competitive environment.
My solution to this is not to do anything with the type per se but just, like, fix it? Stop making Bug Pokemon that are bad. Make better moves for Bug Pokemon to use. Take every fully evolved Bug Pokemon and give it better stats. By all means, keep the way that Bug Pokemon are bad at HP and Special Attack, sure – but give them something for it! This is a type with a lot of Pokemon that get to be Someone’s Special Guy, and they have made it so anyone who gets attached to Bugs early on is guaranteed to have to give up on their faves when they start playing in competitive scenes. That sucks!
There! Just some opinions about how Pokemon should be designed. These are the kinds of opinions I think are interesting to consider.