Why is pokemon so unbalanced?

[Calfuso]

When i was younger it seemed like most pokemon was good in some way or another. It existed pokemon that you knew sucked like Farfetch D and Bibarel. But few pokemon was superior to eachother, they just had different ways of being good. The pokemon games was a fantastic world where you could choose so many partners depending on what you as a individual wanted and create a team whit pokemon that worked together. Then i discovered competitive battling and Smogon. The fact that Pokemon turned alot more advanced wasn't a problem. The problem was the tiers and how brutally they judged pokemon.

Gen 1 to 4s metagames didn't bother me. In these generations it only existed 3 tiers. One of them was mainly for legendaries so it only existed two tiers for regular pokemon. That is okay. Whit so many pokemon it is hard to make them all equal in strength so the fact that some pokemon is sligthy better then others isn't a issue. The problem starts at gen 5 where two more tiers was introduced. Two tiers who was below the previously low tier. In previous gens it was sligthy more pokemon in the lower tiers but the distribution was still pretty even. That was far from the case in gen 5 where pretty much half of all existing pokemon got in Neverused. HALF OF THEM! And that is the lowest tier.

It exist way less pokemon in the treeh higher tiers(excluding ubers). I know that in the actual games, pokemon that you get later in the actual games and is harder to raise generally is stronger. The games is designed to have both pokemon that is easier to get and raise but worse in the end and pokemon that is harder to get and raise but better in the end. Competetive battling ruins that system since getting and raising pokemon isn't present at all. That naturally creates more unbalance then the games have. But still, five tiers and whit more pokemon in the lower tiers is still very unbalanced. The thing that troubles me the most is the starters in this. I thought the starters where designed to be treeh equal pokemon you started your journey whit.

You choose what you wanted and no choice was bad. Too bad Smogon makes it clear that the starters is far from equal and their powers can range in all five tiers. The hard choice you do in the beginning of the games suddenly is easy. Choose Bulbasaur and Chimchar. Don't choose Charmander and Turtwig. Soon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire comes out. I want to choose Treecko becuase i think it's cool and has a battle style i like. But Blaziken is OP uber so it doesn't matter that Gamefreak has given all treeh starters mega evolutions. Blaziken is much better and the other two starters is useless crap you shouldn't pick if you want the best team.

I rambled alot about Smogon telling me that pokemon is ridiculousy balanced but not about if i belive their analysiseses and tier system or not. I do belive them. Pokemon is ridiculousy unbalanced. The reason why it's unbalanced is weird. When i play the games i consider pokemon whit good stats and good moves good pokemon. In competive play the judging is way stricter and weirder then that. A pokemons main thing of being good is to be as special as possible. Then it needs to have extreme stat spreads and good movepools.

I use Golduck in BW2 and he is a balanced pokemon whit good moves. Oh....Golduck is Neverused even though he seems strong in all kinds of ways. Exxeggutor has good stats and good moves...Neverused anyway. Gamefreak tries to fix this whit mega evoultions but i that is a cheap way to fix this. I want the regular pokemon to be more balanced not them evolving into super forms. Why is pokemon so unbalanced? Do you think that the original balance can be brought back? I love Pokemon but this problem bugs me alot.

 

[Trickori]

This seems to be an issue common to all sandbox-ish battle games when they get expansions. I know WoW had similar issues -- and each attempt they made to "fix" classes either broke them in the bad way or made them so OP it created whole new issues.

 

[pkmin3033]

As time goes on and game mechanics get refined, people are inevitably going to get better at exploiting those mechanics when battling one another. It's hardly a Pokemon-only problem: you should see the state of the Yu-Gi-Oh! metagame now, for example. Some things are easier to use than others, or cover more of the common situations, and so they get used significantly more. When playing competitively it becomes an issue of balance, as everyone uses it.

I don't think it's so much a case of Pokemon being unbalanced as it is gamers being a little too good at exploiting what they've got to work with and, once they've found something that works, rarely thinking outside the box - hence the creation of tiers and the like. Sure, some Pokemon are better than others, but if you had every Pokemon at an equal strength, that would take a massive part of the strategy out of the game. There is a counter for everything. Lack of balance can easily be overcome with the right strategy and a little bit of luck.

I've never been hugely into the Pokemon metagame - and I suppose, reading my post, some people who are might call me ignorant - but, as I said, I've seen this in numerous other franchises, and there are always ways around the issues, if people care to think of them. The problem is people rarely do, because the tried and true methods of winning (I suppose in Pokemon it would be using OU Pokemon) are safest, and everyone wants to win. Creativity is punished as much as it is rewarded.

 

[Amaruuk]

This is basically why I never want to touch competitive battle. Aside from the fact that I'm not really a battler or a competitive person, the metagame kills everything I like about Pokemon. I like breeding and building stuff for fun, and working with species I like. The whole "only these species are good and these are the only viable builds and you must have perfect IVs and this nature, etc." sucks all the fun out of an open game about befriending and raising creatures from hundreds of different species, so I just don't care for it at all and play the way I have the most fun. Some people like strategizing and all that but to me it's just "my numbers are better than your numbers" and it's not about the Pokemon anymore.

 

[J9794]

First of all, the normal playthrough is a world apart from competitive pokemon. There are pokemon that are useless in competitive but can be really good when you are playing the story. And about the balance, the tiers are a guide, that doesn't mean that if you have a "bad" pokemon in your team you are always going to lose (just for the record, I swept a team of OU pokes with a sunnybeam exxegutor a couple of days ago on battlespot). There are some pokemon that can cover more roles than others, or that can cover the same roles in a better way, so they tend to be used more. Besides that, competitive players tend to be perfectionist, so they will probably use a pokemon instead of other just because it is slightly better. What I'm trying to say is that you could use an uncommon pokemon instead of an overused one and it might not be a big difference, and anyways, if you take in account the movesets and the items, you can still make a decent amount of team combinations using only OU pokes.
However, I'm no expert on competitive battling, but still, if you are creative enough you could find some way to use your favorite pokemon in a team.


And finally, answering to your question, useful pokes tend to be the ones with an extreme distribution instead of a balanced one because you don't battle 1 on 1, you have a team, and when you have a team it's usually better to have members who specialise in something and are great at it instead of members who can do everything okey.

 

[BadPokemon]

When i was younger it seemed like most pokemon was good in some way or another. It existed pokemon that you knew sucked like Farfetch D and Bibarel. But few pokemon was superior to eachother, they just had different ways of being good. The pokemon games was a fantastic world where you could choose so many partners depending on what you as a individual wanted and create a team whit pokemon that worked together. Then i discovered competitive battling and Smogon. The fact that Pokemon turned alot more advanced wasn't a problem. The problem was the tiers and how brutally they judged pokemon.

Gen 1 to 4s metagames didn't bother me. In these generations it only existed 3 tiers. One of them was mainly for legendaries so it only existed two tiers for regular pokemon. That is okay. Whit so many pokemon it is hard to make them all equal in strength so the fact that some pokemon is sligthy better then others isn't a issue. The problem starts at gen 5 where two more tiers was introduced. Two tiers who was below the previously low tier. In previous gens it was sligthy more pokemon in the lower tiers but the distribution was still pretty even. That was far from the case in gen 5 where pretty much half of all existing pokemon got in Neverused. HALF OF THEM! And that is the lowest tier.

It exist way less pokemon in the treeh higher tiers(excluding ubers). I know that in the actual games, pokemon that you get later in the actual games and is harder to raise generally is stronger. The games is designed to have both pokemon that is easier to get and raise but worse in the end and pokemon that is harder to get and raise but better in the end. Competetive battling ruins that system since getting and raising pokemon isn't present at all. That naturally creates more unbalance then the games have. But still, five tiers and whit more pokemon in the lower tiers is still very unbalanced. The thing that troubles me the most is the starters in this. I thought the starters where designed to be treeh equal pokemon you started your journey whit.

You choose what you wanted and no choice was bad. Too bad Smogon makes it clear that the starters is far from equal and their powers can range in all five tiers. The hard choice you do in the beginning of the games suddenly is easy. Choose Bulbasaur and Chimchar. Don't choose Charmander and Turtwig. Soon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire comes out. I want to choose Treecko becuase i think it's cool and has a battle style i like. But Blaziken is OP uber so it doesn't matter that Gamefreak has given all treeh starters mega evolutions. Blaziken is much better and the other two starters is useless crap you shouldn't pick if you want the best team.

I rambled alot about Smogon telling me that pokemon is ridiculousy balanced but not about if i belive their analysiseses and tier system or not. I do belive them. Pokemon is ridiculousy unbalanced. The reason why it's unbalanced is weird. When i play the games i consider pokemon whit good stats and good moves good pokemon. In competive play the judging is way stricter and weirder then that. A pokemons main thing of being good is to be as special as possible. Then it needs to have extreme stat spreads and good movepools.

I use Golduck in BW2 and he is a balanced pokemon whit good moves. Oh....Golduck is Neverused even though he seems strong in all kinds of ways. Exxeggutor has good stats and good moves...Neverused anyway. Gamefreak tries to fix this whit mega evoultions but i that is a cheap way to fix this. I want the regular pokemon to be more balanced not them evolving into super forms. Why is pokemon so unbalanced? Do you think that the original balance can be brought back? I love Pokemon but this problem bugs me alot.

1. The tiering is heavily based on usage. For example, the design has very little pertinance in competitive. We use pokemon based on their stats, typing synergy with team members, movepool, what is needed for the team, etc.

2. Pokemon fill different roles: utility, sweepers, leads, anti-leads, defensive, bruisers, and choiced users

3. The tiering system is designed for us to use a pokemon to their fullest potential. For example, Tyrantrum. His stats are solid, and has a great ability. Why is he only in RU? Because he has terrible typing, sub-par special bulk, is easily picked off by strong priority, lacks prioity, and the pokemon in the above tiers shut him down with ease. Now, I can use my tyrantrum in a tier where he can preform well while not being overpowered or underpowered (aka UNBLANCED).

4. So, you are saying that pokemon with similar power battling each other is unbalanced as opposed to powerful pokemon destroying them is balanced?

5. You are basing your whole argument on what you think. Example: any young pokemon player (with no knowledge of competetive ) says his charizard is the strongest because it's level 74 and it's his starter. Charizard sucks (bar his megas) in competetive.

6. Lastly, you were saying that you don't raise your pokemon. Of all things, you appreciate them more. I worked hard to breed my gogoat with 5 IVs and nature, and EV trained him.

I'm not saying you can't use lower tiered pokemon in higher tiers and no one is stopping you. It's just that they are outclassed and have very few niches in the higher tiers that make them unviable. Competetive is a lot of fun, and how does breeding take the fun out of it? Playing seriously is fun.

 

[Brendino]

Since this is a discussion about competitive Pokemon battling in the games rather than a discussion on Pokemon as a whole, I'm going to move this over to our Battling & Team Building forum for you!

MOVED.

 

[Nah]

It's a problem common to most competitive gaming things, really. The competitive communities break the game's mechanics down into a science of sorts. Some things are just bound to be more useful than others, and people play to win, so they'll use the stuff that they know generally has a higher probability of success. The average battler is not creative and/or is not a clever strategist, nor are they in it to get warm and fuzzy feelings out of their battles.

You can't have all the Pokemon be special and unique but be equal in terms of battle viability at the same time. Can you really imagine a Magikarp standing on equal footing in battle with a Mewtwo? But what I like about Smogon's tiering system is that the different tiers give all the Pokemon a chance to shine in battle. Maybe Sawk doesn't have what it takes to roll with the OU boys, but it can still be awesome in it's home tier of NU. And it's not like you can't use lower tiered Pokemon in higher tiers; Pokemon Showdown will not bar you from using a team of RU pokes in an OU battle. You can even win if you've got the skills. Remember, a guy did win this year's championship using Pachirisu, an NU Pokemon.

And really, you don't have to do competitive battling if you don't want to. You don't even have to follow Smogon's approach to battling. Just because Smogon's pages says this and that about this Pokemon or that strategy doesn't mean that's the only way to use a Pokemon or to battle. There is the whole world of VGC competitive battling and Battle Spot.


One warning though before this thread goes any further:
This kind of topic tends to incite heated Smogon vs anti-Smogon arguments that are often filled with personal attacks and logical fallacies, and sometimes even devolve into borderline flamewars/trolling. I don't care how serious people can get about competitive gaming or how strongly you feel about certain stances on the metagame, that kind of **** is NOT acceptable. If we can't have a civil discussion about the metagame, let's not even have one at all. I'm tired of seeing this kind of topic devolve, and if I see it start to happen again I WILL make sure action is taken.


Continue.

 

[SnowpointQuincy]

Battles have unlimited potential. SPINDA can pass contrary for all sorts of shenanigans.

Point being, Smogon is limited in scope and ignore pokemon that don't fit their play style. Tiers are based on how often they are used.

Play pokemon in whatever way is most fun for you.

 

[Polar Spectrum]

Hahah don't worry Zekrom, my bipolar disorder has me really mellow right now. If there's trouble it won't be from me at least.

Long response short, if stuff like that bothers you mate just don't interact with Smogon. Or those types of people. I think they're poo - but that's my opinion, and we're all entitled to at least that much. This sort of issue is why I butt heads with people like Platinum Dude very often though. (much respect to Platinum's experience and knowledge on pokemon meta)

I'll abbreviate that whole tired rant I go on with this image

"Strong Pokemon. Weak pokemon. That is only the selfish perception of people. Truly skilled trainers should try to win with the pokemon they love best."

 

[DocLive]

smogons tier list is simply based on usage percentage in competitve battle, not actualy ability of the pokemon. hell, i run a rain team and all 6 of my pokes are uu or bl and i still do fairly well for myself, parasect (i believe is NU, but i could be wrong) is actually one of the top pokes on my team, simply because its typing (grass and bug) works so well if you can predict an incoming grass or thunder attack, and with dry skin, left overs and leech seed its great at setting up substitutes and then spore-x-scissor.

just because pokes are low on smogons tier list does not mean they aren't good

 

[Dark Azelf]

Primarily because gf/nintendo have no idea what they are doing at this point in regard to pokemon and seem to think that junk like Lucario and Mewtwo (see: fanboy pleasing) need to be even more powerful with poorly designed, overpowered, uneeeded, broken, poorly disguised uber pokemon aka Mega evos whilst pokemon like farfetch'd, golduck etc dont get one when uhhh THEY ARE THE ONLY THINGS THAN NEED THEM. At least Beedril, Pidgeot and Sableye get something. :|

Its just blatantly obvious that nintendo are milking the franchise by churming out sub par games now and have run out of ideas aka jumping the shark. Want more evidence? Rather than actual new pokemon this gen, we got like 70 this gen (most of which are ass, but i digress) as opposed to the usual 100+ and they gave us ****** megas to mask this. :|

P.s Mega Evos are a blatant rip off of Digimon.


Edit: And that also sucked.

 

[wolf]

When i was younger it seemed like most pokemon was good in some way or another. It existed pokemon that you knew sucked like Farfetch D and Bibarel. But few pokemon was superior to eachother, they just had different ways of being good. The pokemon games was a fantastic world where you could choose so many partners depending on what you as a individual wanted and create a team whit pokemon that worked together. Then i discovered competitive battling and Smogon. The fact that Pokemon turned alot more advanced wasn't a problem. The problem was the tiers and how brutally they judged pokemon.

...

Game Freak is a small team of developers, so I doubt that the balance of PvP play in their games is high on their priorities. (Heck, recently they've even had trouble optimizing their games.) Keep in mind that Pokemon is largely geared towards children. A good way to catch people's, especially children's, attention is to make bigger and stronger Pokemon. This is what results in a power creep. Smogon attempts to get around this by making tiers. This allows more Pokemon to be viable in their respective tiers. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of Pokemon in the depths of NU that find little use. This is just a result of having too many Pokemon and too little tiers to accommodate them all. The more Pokemon there are, the more Pokemon that get outclassed by other similar Pokemon (e.g. Chansey being better than Blissey on most teams). I assume Smogon hasn't made any more tiers because a) not enough people would play in the new tier(s) and/or b) too many tiers would be too complex and intimidating for the average player (as if it isn't already).

Like others have said, no one is telling you that you need to use Pokemon that are objectively the most viable. Some people let their personal tastes influence what they use, and that's perfectly fine. Smogon is a community and resource that aims to help you win battles by suggesting what are usually the best options for accomplishing that goal. They aren't a dictatorship telling you what to do.

P.s Mega Evos are a blatant rip off of Digimon.

Only the name is. Besides, there aren't many other words available that both sound good and aren't overused. They could've called them Super Evolutions but that would've been too trite.

 

[Juxapose]

I'll have to comment that I agree with the original post. I have made a statement similar to this, and found that many people prefer a game with overpowered and unbalanced characters. People may say that "this is a competitive game, and people want to win." but those always forget that this is POKEMON. This is not a serious game meant for adults to play seriously. This is a game for everyone to play together in harmony while enjoying the company of virtual pets that love to fight. Lumping Pokémon with the other competitive games such as WoW and Street Fighter is just silly and failing to see the point of playing. I know I will have most of this forum saying that I am wrong.


Back on topic: one of the problems that I see in this generation is that unlike Gen 5, Gen 6 has no in-game metagame. So players like myself have no choice but to play online, and must sort through the tiers and learn to play competitively if we liked it or not. Other option is to just breed Pokémon all of our hundreds of hours playing, or harvest Berries.


In short, just don't take the competitive scene too seriously, and just enjoy the game.

 

[BadPokemon]

I'll have to comment that I agree with the original post. I have made a statement similar to this, and found that many people prefer a game with overpowered and unbalanced characters. People may say that "this is a competitive game, and people want to win." but those always forget that this is POKEMON. This is not a serious game meant for adults to play seriously. This is a game for everyone to play together in harmony while enjoying the company of virtual pets that love to fight. Lumping Pokémon with the other competitive games such as WoW and Street Fighter is just silly and failing to see the point of playing. I know I will have most of this forum saying that I am wrong.


Back on topic: one of the problems that I see in this generation is that unlike Gen 5, Gen 6 has no in-game metagame. So players like myself have no choice but to play online, and must sort through the tiers and learn to play competitively if we liked it or not. Other option is to just breed Pokémon all of our hundreds of hours playing, or harvest Berries.


In short, just don't take the competitive scene too seriously, and just enjoy the game.

Why can't it be a serious game for adults/teens with competetive. You can play the game however you want. Pokemon is extremely competetive with many strategies. I'm not saying you are wrong because the original intent is for casual play, but game freak has been making the game more competetive friendly with the new breeding mechanics, horde battles, and exp share. Therefore, in a way, both sides are right.

The point of competetive is to have fun while having a serious match. Saying its pointless and stupid is like saying sports (which are for fun and serious as well) are pointless, and is extremely ignorant. There are many aspects to pokemon that people like- ROM hacks, storyline, competetive, fan fiction, anime, and much more.

 

[Nah]

Back on topic: one of the problems that I see in this generation is that unlike Gen 5, Gen 6 has no in-game metagame. So players like myself have no choice but to play online, and must sort through the tiers and learn to play competitively if we liked it or not. Other option is to just breed Pokémon all of our hundreds of hours playing, or harvest Berries.

Eh? Battle Spot is Gen 6's "in-game metagame". It's the same thing as Gen 5's random WiFi battles. Or if you're talking about Unova's Battle Subway, Kalos has its equivalent in Kiloude City's Battle Maison.

 

[Polar Spectrum]

Anything adults want to take seriously and play competitively; they can.

Pokemon is actually pretty great for competitive play too; it's changed a lot over the years but it's still thriving rightfully so. And as long as people continue to enjoy it; it'll keep on keepin' on.

Some people are discussing many competitive aspect things pertaining to tiers; meanwhile I personally will just enjoy the tears.

 

[Juxapose]

Why can't it be a serious game for adults/teens with competetive. You can play the game however you want. Pokemon is extremely competetive with many strategies. I'm not saying you are wrong because the original intent is for casual play, but game freak has been making the game more competetive friendly with the new breeding mechanics, horde battles, and exp share. Therefore, in a way, both sides are right.

The point of competetive is to have fun while having a serious match. Saying its pointless and stupid is like saying sports (which are for fun and serious as well) are pointless, and is extremely ignorant. There are many aspects to pokemon that people like- ROM hacks, storyline, competetive, fan fiction, anime, and much more.

The main reason I claim that the game is not competitive is for the same reason the original poster commented. Truly competitive games such as online MMO (WoW as an example) and street fighter is the balance aspect. No balance = no true competitive spirit. Just a bunch of people running around with legends or whatever the players class as "OU", while the community inventing rules that the game itself does not enforce. Then we have the random glitches and broken rules that people exploit to win. I can think of quite a few games that are not "competitive" despite it's community claiming to be so. Only difference is that Pokémon has tournaments, BUT even game freak does not recognize Smogon rules or bans. Thusfore, no balance.

 

[BadPokemon]

The main reason I claim that the game is not competitive is for the same reason the original poster commented. Truly competitive games such as online MMO (WoW as an example) and street fighter is the balance aspect. No balance = no true competitive spirit. Just a bunch of people running around with legends or whatever the players class as "OU", while the community inventing rules that the game itself does not enforce. Then we have the random glitches and broken rules that people exploit to win. I can think of quite a few games that are not "competitive" despite it's community claiming to be so. Only difference is that Pokémon has tournaments, BUT even game freak does not recognize Smogon rules or bans. Thusfore, no balance.

What broken rules and glitches are exploited? How is creating rules and classifying pokemon based on usage and power unbalanced? It makes things balanced, and is competetive. Don't forget VGC is pokemon run- not community (so it's official).

 

[Hilbert11]

Personally, I like how the tiers categorizes the mons. It essentially allowed people to use mons not necessarily useful against "OP" ones. It's like setting a fair ground for each of them. Without tiers, you'd probably only see Arceus slaughtering Brelooms and Bellosoms and such (I have nothing against them, just sayin')