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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
Stadium has quirks of its own that the base games do not (Stadium 2 for Gen 2 as well).
Hyper Beam worked better with what it was in Gen 1 because of a general lack of boosting moves/options and the higher bulk relative to modern Pokémon courtesy of stat EXP.
RBY has its own quirks such as "PVP being added as a late addition at the behest of the publishers, whomst pressured Game Freak to make PvP work at the end of development, making it extremely rushed"
Half of Stadium's job was to make a game that could actually be reliably used for competitive tournaments at the time, because RBY sure as shit was not. Stadium 2 we can forego because Gen 2 itself is just actually fairly stable, but Gen 1 RBY OU is literally basically modded RBY OU
I don't think Gen 1 PvP actually has all that many modded concessions, and most of them outside of Sleep Clause (which is a Stadium addition) really just exist to solve programming errors. Offhand:
- Psywave Desync Clause (this one genuinely feels like a omission on GF's part, though it's in line with Gen 1's 1/256 misses)
- Counter Desync Clause (a result of the FIGHT button, and errors involving it are probably a result of late PvP additions, since I'm not specifically aware of uneven data communication being an issue in later Gens)
- Sleep Clause (an understandable inclusion, given how powerful Gen 1 Sleep is, though Stadium using it is probably more because most of its formats use 3v3 and not full 6v6)
- Freeze Clause (see Sleep Clause)
- Whatever-clause-assumes-both-trainers-fully-healed-their-teams-before-joining-a-link-battle (IDK if this even counts as a mod but I'm including it anyway)
- Perfect DV mod, as it doesn't impact gameplay mechanics, and is theoretically obtainable with tradebacks in most cases anyway. One of the cases where tradebacks don't apply (Mewtwo) does have gameplay repercussions, but the gameplay effects aren't changed by the mod... just how accessible they are. It's more of a legality mod than a gameplay mod.
- HP percentage mod, since literally every tier uses this too, and it's unfair to single out Gen 1.
Basically, from what I know, while Gen 1 Showdown gameplay is undeniably modded, the community is largely dedicated to keeping the gameplay true to all of Game Freak's strange coding decisions and poor coding oversights, including their impacts on gameplay. Mods for specific moves really only exist when the issues involving said moves can cause the games to desync. Stadium is definitely a more stable gameplay experience, but it also removes a little of the nonsense that gives Gen 1 competitive its charm.
If anyone asks why I don't do research before making posts like these, it's probably because I'm responding on mobile and I am replying in the moment and don't feel like taking the time to research because I don't feel like specific examples would make my point any better.
Relevant Policy Review thread going on now: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...ad-about-rby-cart-accuracy-vs-modding.3739684
Static encounters including Mewtwo aren't affected by the DV limitation because it's just based on how wild encounters are generated after an encounter rate roll.
Yeah I did glance at the policy review thread, it's pretty interesting. I actually didn't know that the uneven way link battles handle information from each player' FIGHT command had multiple impacts on the battle until like, last week lol. I think it was Reverend's video on Counter that introduced me to it, showing that I don't play the Gen but I do like learning about its mechanics and bits about its metagames.
gen 1 ou is funny as hell. thats not an unpopular opinion sorry but the fact theres programming patches for it because of how insanely bad the pvp code is amuses me
its a bit wild how smogon players prefer old gens being frozen though. The whole rby tradebacks ban feels silly, if you can do it you should do it etc, even if its not the game you used to play or something. I dont remember this being a common thought process for other competitive games, but I could just have a limited view LOL
its a bit wild how smogon players prefer old gens being frozen though. The whole rby tradebacks ban feels silly, if you can do it you should do it etc, even if its not the game you used to play or something. I dont remember this being a common thought process for other competitive games, but I could just have a limited view LOL
Y'know, it gets me how with Pokemon comp, the meta back then wasn't so adapting to change
Like it was only recently people realized Normal types weren't affected by Body Slam paralysis. Most of meta picks were set in stone for over a decade that point
But then man. Now we have a lot of changes. We went from "Moltres is the worst bird" to "Moltres does very well in RBYOU actually" after people started to experiment more
Gen 3 OU similarly is experimenting more these days, and then Gen 4 we had Clefable reinspected for being a bulky status immune mon after its Gen 6/7 success
It's a nice thing, to see people break out from stereotypical picks and find use that's more than just niche
Like it was only recently people realized Normal types weren't affected by Body Slam paralysis. Most of meta picks were set in stone for over a decade that point
But then man. Now we have a lot of changes. We went from "Moltres is the worst bird" to "Moltres does very well in RBYOU actually" after people started to experiment more
Gen 3 OU similarly is experimenting more these days, and then Gen 4 we had Clefable reinspected for being a bulky status immune mon after its Gen 6/7 success
It's a nice thing, to see people break out from stereotypical picks and find use that's more than just niche
I used to see this semi-frequently in classic fighting games. In the late '90s, Capcom would occasionally put out an updated version of one of their titles in the arcades, but the community would sometimes stick with an older version of it for one reason or another anyway. Like, the Street Fighter Alpha 3 playerbase largely stayed on the original CPS2 release even though the Naomi re-release added a ton of then-console-exclusive characters to it and fixed a bunch of infinite combos. Alpha 2 was also largely preferred over Alpha 2 Gold for reasons that I've entirely forgotten at this point. The Street Fighter III community also stayed on CPS3 instead of migrating to the later Naomi release. There were a lot of little reasons for this. Sometimes some of the specific changes were arguably a step back for one reason or another, but I think chief among them was that the updated versions of these games weren't as widely available worldwide as they were in Japan, so people largely just preferred to stick with what they were familiar with and what they had already invested practice time into.
That sort of mindset isn't so common in the genre today, but it's still heavily embedded into Smash Bros. The Smash Ultimate devs actually put in a decent amount of work into making the Stamina mode viable (e.g. some fixes to what had previously been fundamentally broken combo set-ups in a format that didn't use the standard percentage-based scaling knockback), as well as adding a traditional super meter mechanic into the game as an alternative to the standard Final Smash mechanic so that all of the ultimate attacks could still be utilized in some manner even when items were disabled. The game even heavily features both of these things in its various single-player modes, as if the devs wanted to make sure that the players at least tried them out. Does the competitive Smash community utilize either of them at all, even in smaller alternative-rules side brackets? Nope. They just play Smash with largely the same house rules they always have, with only the slightest tweaks from one game release to the next. (Disclaimer: I haven't been involved with Smash tournaments since 2020 and don't care to investigate whether any of this has changed since then.)
People just get set in their ways, and after enough time of being set in their ways, it takes a lot of inertia to get them to budge. To tie this back into unpopular opinions about Pokemon, this is the sort of stuff that got me to abandon Smogon OU for VGC back in Gen 4. Like around the time that Garchomp got put into Ubers, I sat back and thought about the game at a macro scale a little bit and came to the conclusion that some of the most significant gripes that the community had with the game's balance were at least partially a result of the rules that the community itself imposed onto the game. To give a simple example, Outrage and Stealth Rock were extremely powerful and centralizing in Singles... but they kind of sucked in Doubles. So, at least a few of the reasons that contributed to why Garchomp was so polarizing in OU (Outrage OP, Stealth Rock resistance) weren't factors at all in the "official" ruleset. So that gets the gears turning in my head, and I figure that: to any extent that Game Freak is putting any care into competitive decisions at all, that care is going into Doubles, so I'm just going to move on with my life and play Doubles rather than deal with any of these arguments about Singles.
I'm a pretty strong believer in the idea of "playing the game that you have, not the game that you wished you had." And if I don't like the game that I have, then I'd just rather move onto another game altogether than try to "fix" the current one myself, because the latter process just comes with a whole bunch of community politics and baggage that I loathe to interact with. Tons of agenda-setting for what "should" be part of the game, who gets to decide that, and how best to mask your personal taste as "objectivity." I don't want to play Debate Club. I want to play video games.
(This is not a value judgement on your favorite metagame. Especially you RBY heads. I think it's great that anyone out there is trying to keep classic scenes alive at all, especially when their default state is such a hilarious patchwork that barely functions out of the box. You guys do you.)
Tradeback RBY is wildly different enough to warrant its own meta.
I suppose it makes sense to have them be a time capsule of sorts because it reflects how things were at the time.
For example, Electivire being OU in Gen 4 because everyone wanted to make it work at the time. Would it be UU if it was updated for the current meta? Probably. But it's not accurate to what it was back then.
Ideally, gens should have a cutoff point and have a "Historic Tier" and "Current Tier" IMO.
VGC is low-key a horrible example of it tho. After all, most of the in-game campaign is Singles. It's the main reason why Smogon is so popular, VGC is the one that feels like crazy house rules.
As for my unpopular opinion of the day... Shiny hunting is a fool's errand.
No, it's not because of anything related to the process itself. Most shinies are just too ugly/similar to bother.
Except some past gen stuff has been altered, some big stuff even, like the banning of the Gems in gen 5.Tradeback RBY is wildly different enough to warrant its own meta.
I suppose it makes sense to have them be a time capsule of sorts because it reflects how things were at the time.
For example, Electivire being OU in Gen 4 because everyone wanted to make it work at the time. Would it be UU if it was updated for the current meta? Probably. But it's not accurate to what it was back then.
Ideally, gens should have a cutoff point and have a "Historic Tier" and "Current Tier" IMO.
VGC is low-key a horrible example of it tho. After all, most of the in-game campaign is Singles. It's the main reason why Smogon is so popular, VGC is the one that feels like crazy house rules.
As for my unpopular opinion of the day... Shiny hunting is a fool's errand.
No, it's not because of anything related to the process itself. Most shinies are just too ugly/similar to bother.
Which is why I said there should be a historic cutoff for the record and then the updated, current meta.
Did y'all know people actually play offense in GSC nowadays?
I've always derisively referred to them as freak genetic mutations.No, it's not because of anything related to the process itself. Most shinies are just too ugly/similar to bother.
I mean you wanna see something that somehow embodies both ends of this oddity? Look at Gen 2 UU and UUBL or more accurately RU and UU. They've banned like 30-ish Pokémon in an attempt to keep the Tier as stall-y as they want it and won't accept that it's clearly just a lower tier at this point.
The "Normal Types being immune to Body Slam" mechanics revelation is a good example of how Gen 1 players are willing to keep Gen 1 oddities despite their impact on the game. That was over 10 years of a metagame being played wrongly, and they were willing to run with the change.
Speaking of change, this is more of an unpopular opinion about Smogon itself rather than the Pokémon games, but I'm not totally happy with the current usage-based tiering. I think it makes sense, to a point, especially since the tiers themselves have the word "Used" in them. But it annoys me when a perfectly acceptable Pokémon in a lower tier gets removed and shut out from that tier (or tiers) just because it finds a significant niche in a higher tier to cause it to be tiered there instead. I started learning competitive Pokémon back when the "Used" designation wasn't indicative of how tiering happened, and tier lists were just kind of popular opinion on a Pokémon's strength/viability. While that system has some obvious problems, I do like how it didn't "punish" lower tiers for higher tiers finding clever uses for previously ignored Pokémon.
I know that documentation for a system like that would probably be more trouble than it's worth, but I envision it using the BL lists as "cutoff" points, kind of like how Ubers works; the Pokémon in the Ubers list are prohibited from being used in tiers below, but can be used in any above. I imagine that Pokémon would be assumed excluded until their usage falls low enough to be tested in lower tiers, but if they are shown to be healthy for a given tier, they could still be used, even if it reaches official usage stats to be placed back into a higher tier.
It's impossible to have an objective assessment of a mon's strength though.
The obvious counterpoint to this is that if a mon manages to rise up, even on a niche use, to a higher-tier, it means that it's working well enough to belong there.
And when It stops working... Well, we know the deal.
That's why I say to start things off with the current system, but let lower tiers keep their toys that still get used in, say, OU.It's impossible to have an objective assessment of a mon's strength though.
The obvious counterpoint to this is that if a mon manages to rise up, even on a niche use, to a higher-tier, it means that it's working well enough to belong there.
And when It stops working... Well, we know the deal.
Gastrodon is the main case I am thinking of but I'm sure there are others.
I always love to see Sinnoh mons get their flowers, but this mon hasn't been OU since Gen 5.
This is exactly why the system works. Sure, you can try to run a gimmick to get the jump on some mons, especially something like Gastrodon, which has Storm Drain to give it an extra immunity.
But ultimately, gimmicks don't get to the 4.52% cutoff point unless they're good or popular enough. And if they do, they've earned their place.
Yung Dramps
awesome gaming
Call me a boomer or whatever but honestly I think Tyranitar and Garchomp dropping out of OU was the final nail in the coffin for compmons for me after already having been kinda disaffected for years. I know I know powercreep happens, old titans have fallen out of favor before... but I dunno man, this really feels like a uniquely dark omen. I just can't look at Garchomp's page, see "UUBL" next to its picture and not think something has gone horribly wrong
I blame Game Freak for being COWARDS and not giving Garchomp Dragon Dance (and High Horsepower so he can put the fear of Cynthia in VGC too)
UUBL is basically OU.
Also frankly Tyranitar's been teetering on the edge ever since Pursuit died, that was its niche, all its got left is being the best sand setter and sand's not great with Tera. Honestly, after the buffs hail got, sand's probably the worst weather now. Especially with Tera since it's now an active detriment to your team. And Tyranitar doesn't really have another ability.
i was willing to accept lando dropping due to his huge movepool nerfs plus powercreep but now he's top 5 usage and it frightens me. im convinced the only way to push lando out of the top of ou is to not put him in the game or just make effectively lando 2 thats better in every way.
It was close in Gen 8 for a little while because of Dracovish. I could have sworn it was OU at some point in the last few gens, but I did do some digging through Marty's old usage stats and it had the highest usage in OU compared to any other tier besides PU. If the usage cutoff was a little lower (I was remembering it at 3.41% or so which I think was its original value?) it could have been OU and been locked out of all the other lower tiers.
I'm also going to say I'm amused you wrote your post with a sense of finality as if tier positions don't shift subtly (and not-so-subtly) all the time throughout a generation. Just because a Pokémon doesn't make a specific tier cutoff at the end of a years-developed metagame doesn't mean they weren't within the cutoff at some point, and even if they drop, they usually still have some use courtesy of the merits that fit them into the tier in the first place (unless DLC happens and that Pokémon's niche just got eclipsed by a new addition or three).
But at this point i think I'm starting to argue about viability vs usage which is not a discussion I want to get into.