Let's get rid of Individual Values.

Since the introduction of Individual Values Pokémon has been burdened with a sligthly fascist undertone in the game play department. Individual Values (IVs) are an abstraction of an individual Pokémon's genetic traits as expressed in their stats (HP, Atk, Spd etc). These stats are fixed and immutable from the Pokémon's birth onwards, and individual Pokémon have different configurations of IVs. The idea behind this is to make Pokémon more unique by giving them personalized traits beyond just a Nature and an Ability; it's an attempt to make a Pokémon your Pokémon by implying that it's unlike any other (on some level anyway). IVs were never a good way to convey this (especially because they're not shown to or explained to the player) in comparison to, say, giving Pokémon multiple colors and variations to their sprites but the effort is appreciated. Sadly, not all Pokémon have the same amount of IVs. There is a maximum amount of IVs any Pokémon can have, and having a high IV value for certain stats is important for getting that Pokémon to its most powerful possible state.

This means that some Pokémon are simply better than other Pokémon. This means that no matter what you do, no matter how hard you train, your Pokémon will most likely never be as strong as another Pokémon could be. And, while this is somewhat a reflection of some loose interpretation of 'reality', in a game about fighting monsters while treating them as your friends this system has unfortunate implications. Mainly in the eugenics department. Committed trainers will (and are) looking and--especially--breeding their Pokémon to obtain one that has the highest possible IV stat of the type the trainer is looking for. They're essentially trying to breed an ÜberMon, a Pokémon that is inherently superior to all other creatures of its kind. Not really something we want to attach to a kid's game I think, but that's perhaps up for debate.

My real problem with IVs is that their cumbersome and tedious and don't add anything to the game. It's just a stupid randomiser that makes you feel bad about your favorite Pokémon when you realize they're not in the 'top percentage' of their kind, meaning they'll never be able to reach their full potential. At first I thought it would be fine to change IVs so every Pokémon has the same amount of IVs but their distribution is simply shuffled around but I realised that's only mitigating the problem rather than getting rid of it. 

The IV system should be ripped out of the franchise, it was a mistake. If you want more individual Pokémon they should be differentiated in other ways. I'm a proponent of multiple sprites for Pokémon (and seeing the love for Vivillon I think I'm on to something), but I think Pokémon should just start having twó Natures rather than one.

In the current system when a Pokémon is 'born' it is born with a Nature, which is essentially an abstraction of its personality; it's brave or playful or shy etc. While not exactly 'realistic', it doesn't have the fascism problem ánd its effects are less profound. The player can knów what Nature the Pokémon has and can raise it to reflect its personality. If it has a Nature that tends towards Speed, maybe it's a good idea if the player were to promote that tendency. Giving Pokémon two Natures amplifies this effect and automatically differentiates between Pokémon more effectively. Trainers looking for a Pokémon with a specific temperament can still do so, but players don't need to worry that their beloved Pokémon is burdened with inferior genetics. I'd love a system where Pokémon personalities are more dynamic as well, changing to reflect its development (maybe as a result of EVs gained), but I'm will to settle for getting rid of IVs, and gaining an extra Nature. 

I'll have a Quiet Gentle Exploud please.

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!

Baby Pokémon should be retconned out of existence.

Baby Pokémon are pre-evolutions of existing evolutionary chains. They can only be obtained by breeding another of the Pokémon's forms while that Pokémon is holding a specific Incense item. Baby Pokémon are all extremely weak, which is appropriate for a baby-anything. The big problem with Baby Pokémon is that they don't provide any benefit, they're just Pokémon that are a hassle to obtain; serving only as another hurdle to filling up the PokéDex. They don't learn special moves or abilities, and all they do is evolve into the same Pokémon you bred them from; and there's even one Pokémon that gets stuck in its Baby form, cursed to be a weakling forever.

Image by Tails199950 on DeviantArt

Baby Pokémon are pure fanservice, designed to make us go 'AMAGAHDITSSOOOKYOOT!' at the top of our lungs, shamelessly milking humanity's inherent obsession with cute things. Baby Pokémon should be abolished; all Baby Pokémon should be retconned into being regular parts of their evolutionary families. You should be able to encounter a Pichu in the wild, and the Pikachu-family would simply consist of three Pokémon, rather than two regular forms and a Baby. This wouldn't create any conflict because there are no Pokémon with three stages ánd a Baby form. Removing the Baby mechanism would make the game more intuitive, make more sense and even improve some currently non-evolving Pokémon by instituting a natural form progression. To be clear; all your favorite Babies will still be around, but they won't be a separate class of Pokémon anymore; just low-level versions of their families.

And by the way, my favorite Baby is Cleffa.

Mega evolutions were a terrible idea.

I seem to be a minority on this, but I consider Mega forms of Pokémon to be a terrible idea. For those of us who don't know; in the 6th generation of the Pokémon games some Pokémon have gained the ability to transform into more powerful forms during battle if they're holding a certain item. The Pokémon changes back into its normal form after the battle. There are plenty of sites where you can read all about this process commonly referred to as 'Mega evolution', so I'll pass over it here to get to the meat of my objections to this system.

Mega Blaziken

One of the main tenets of the Pokémon games is that player should be able to play with the Pokémon they enjoy; cemented by the insistence of the games that Pokémon are partners rather than tools to be used at will. This idea has been very flawed from the start seeing as it is extremely clear that some Pokémon are objectively 'better' than others at doing the main thing you can do with them in these games: battle other Pokémon. But this imbalance remained more-or-less manageable, even if it helped motivate an entire subset of players to set up a custom ruleset to match Pokémon with their equals in power via the Smogon system. With Mega forms being introduced this precarious balance is completely upended.

Not áll Pokémon evolutionary lines have receive Mega forms, in fact only a few have gotten them. This means that the games' designers have played favorites picking and choosing certain Pokémon over others deciding which ones would become exalted. Mega forms have been made into such powerhouses that they are very widely used, meaning that players are heavily encouraged to include one of these few Pokémon in their teams in order to retain that competitive edge. This means that players are encouraged to pick certain Pokémon over others based on a utilitarian power level, leaving their favorites by the wayside.

The psychological impact of Mega forms has been to make certain evolutionary lines more special and important than others: 'chosen' by the game developers as it were to be figureheads of the games, informing players that their beloveds are just ordinary. There's a reason why there has been so much clamoring for other Pokémon to get the Mega treatment: many people want to see their favorites become Mega too. 

These are fan concept art

From a pure gameplay standpoint I have no problems with the Mega forms per sé; I think they fit poorly in the established Pokémon setting but I can overlook that. They provide interesting dynamics in combat, they're not so overpowered as to upset the entirety of game play and from a pure marketing standpoint the move has turned out to be pure genius on the developer's part. From the perspective of merging gameplay and themes however Mega forms don't work and I think they should be removed from the games' canon entirely or every evolutionary family should get a Mega form. 

Shouldn't players feel good about whichever Pokémon they like rather than what the game developers think they should?