What the new Type Chart should look like.

Last time I talked about how the Type chart should be overhauled, and what Types should be cut out or combined. I'm very happy with the results and I thought I'd put up a rough draft of how the new chart would play out in terms of effectiveness and resistances. Let it be clear that if the Type chart is changed, then the entire Pokémon ecosystem will have to change accordingly in terms of moves, Abilities and Pokémon stats as well. You might look at this chart and think that some Types are too strong or too weak, but remember that these problems existed already and are manageable with proper design in other areas. The Type chart is a rough instrument for balacing anything, and--while I've done a decent job of balancing--the Type interactions need to make some 'sense' as well for them to work in-game.

One of the major overhauls the Type chart has undergone is that resistances now change whether the damage is coming from a physical or a special attack. Effectively I've implemented a second 'split' in the Types, there's now a difference between a Physical Electric attack and a Special Electric attack. There are relatively few moves and Abilities that impede Special moves, so Special moves generally have an advantage over physical moves. In the Type chart you'll notice that Physical moves often have a higher effectiveness than Special moves; Earth is immune to Special Electric moves while it only resists Physical Electric moves for example. The new movepool should reflect this change; Special moves have less to worry about in terms of Abilities and moves, but are not equally strong overall. Without further ado: here's the new Type chart.

The left-most column show the attacking Type. The top graph shows the effectiveness of Physical moves.

Link to full Doc

Let me know what you think.

The Type Chart needs an overhaul.

There are 18 Pokémon Types at the time of writing, and while it never made sense it's about damn time to have a fresh look at it and see what can be better. In the spirit of revisioning everything Pokémon I've taken the liberty to view the Type chart as something that can be changed while remaining coherent with the existing Pokémon.

The Type chart has always been weirdly split between three 'kinds' of Types: the elements, the energies and the beasts. The elements are Fire, Water, Grass, Electric, Earth, Rock, Poison, Steel and Ice; the energies (referring to a creature's properties) are Psychic, Fighting, Ghost and Dark; the beasts are Flying, Bug, Dragon and Fairy. Normal is the 'none-of-the-above' category. This is functional, if kind of strange. Why is 'Bug' a Type? Why are Earth and Rock separated? Why would the energies and the beasts affect each other, and what would the logic behind their interactions be? Dragon might as well be weak to Steel or Poison than to Ice for example; the choices were most likely based on what was expedient rather than intuitive. I think the Type chart can not only be reduced in size by removing and merging a few Types, I think it can be actively improved into being (slightly) more sensible ánd provide a better and more intuitive Type balance.

There are 18 Types now, and we're going to be ending up with 14. I'll discuss the effectiveness of the 'new' Types in a future post. The first thing we're going to do is get rid of the Flying, Bug, Dragon and Fairy Types. Flying was orginally meant to be the 'Bird' Type, not so much referring to the element of Air, but to creatures that are able to fly. We're going to convert Flying in the the new Type called Air, which becomes one of the elemental Types. Physical Air moves are typically fast with cutting effects, while special Air moves are related to wind and turbulence. Bug and Dragon get cut out entirely: it makes no sense at all to have two (yes two) Types that break the mold by referring specifically to a certain kind of creature, rather than to an aspect of that creature. Bugs and Dragons are scattered through the other Types, often to Air and Normal. Fairies are not réally a beast Type. Fairy refers to a benevolent innocence that Fairy Pokémon posess, therefore placing it in the energy Type spectrum. Fairies can be very different kinds of creatures after all. Fairy becomes what it actually is: the Light Type. The innocence and good nature of Light Pokémon stands in contrast to the mischievousness and deviant nature of Dark Types. Ground and Rock Types have been straight-up merged, with some Earth or Rock Pokémon migrating to the Normal Type or elsewhere. Earth and Rock are too similar and work well as a single elemental Type. Every Pokémon that is strongly connected to the earth, sand and stone are now Earth Pokémon. Flying Pokémon are not blanketly immune to Earth, some moves are classified as ground-based, and Pokémon that can leave the ground will be immune to those. Physical Earth moves are based more on rocks while the special moves are linked more to tectonic vibrations. Before introducing the most controversial merger, I just want to note that the Steel Type should be renamed to Metal, because many Steel Pokémon aren't based on steel, but on other metals instead. It just makes more sense to call them Metal Type Pokémon. But without further ado, the final change is the merging of Fighting and Psychic Types. The Pokémon Medicham best exemplifies how closely Psychic and Fighting Types are related. Both Types refer to using the power of concentration and turning that into attacks. Psychic is often associated with magic, but upon closer inspection it is more related to Pokémon that achieve very high levels of concentration, just as Fighting Types do. This is why Fighting Pokémon are super effective against Normal Types: their concentrated and controlled attacks are far more skillful than what Normal Pokémon can muster. The difference between Psychic and Fighting Pokémon is that their attacks come from the special and phsyical sides respectively, with very little overlap between the two. So we have two Types that don't overlap very much, only cover a single side of the physical/special spectrum and have thematic ties to one another? It surprises me that I haven't seen anyone write about merging these two Types: coming together in a new Focus Type.

This merging of Psychic and Fighting serves also to introduce the concept that Pokémon games should start including: differentiating between the effectiveness of moves, based on whether or not they're physical or special moves. Ghosts should be immune to many physical moves for example, but won't be immune to special attacks of the same Type! There would be a difference between the effectiveness of a special or a physical Focus attack, opening up the Type chart even further and encouraging players to make use of Pokémon that can attack with both phsyical ánd special moves rather than focusing exclusively on one side. I'll talk more about this in a future post as well, I just thought I'd introduce the concept to get you thinking.

To conclude: we are now left with 14 Types: Fire, Grass, Water, Electric, Earth, Air, Ice, Poison, Metal, Light, Dark, Focus, Ghost and Normal. A much cleaner Type chart with oodles of potential. Keep an eye out for the new Type chart that I'll be posting, now split between physical and special effectiveness!