READ ME: Hello! Just a reminder that looking for improvement in something doesn't necessarily mean that it is something bad. Gym Leaders are an excellent staple to the series that serve as challenge and assessment for the player and trainers. Right now, Gym Leaders showcase single types, and sometimes showcase the TM that they will give you. I want to expand on those concepts. Other Things: - The Fighting and Grass sections have noticeably different audio because those sections got corrupted, I don't know why they did. I could have re-recorded, but since I'm a workaholic, it's obviously healthier to tell myself "Done is better than perfect" for a hobby. - Pay attention to clarifying words like "most", "many", "tend to", "usually", "mainly", "rarely", "potentially", "possibly", etc. These words do not mean "all", "100%", "never". When proposing ideas, the point is to establish as many possibilities as you can, test them, assess the resources for implementation, and then finally confidently implement them. I have 0 experience with modding games, so this channel mostly sticks to exploring the realm of what is possible and the potential effects.
Gym combos: Ghost + Normal You can't hit the ghost pokemon and you lose too much pp or hp Counter play: Mold break, Scrappy, Choiced Miltank + Body slam, toxic, leech seed Ground + Fire Ware moves are weakened by weather, Counter play: Dragon types, Levitate, Gliscor, Ground types,
I personally would advocate for a gym's battlefield effects to be capable of being removed/overwritten (yet still otherwise permanent). Newer players may feel clever if they can even the playing field or turn it to their advantage.
Yeah. Even some things like getting a move that only works in doubles in the middle of your journey becomes poinless. There is no indication of competitive play during game journey. In my gen 10 wishlist, we would just have 3 teams of 6 pokemon at same time. One team for singles, other team for doubles, and a team of mounts (in which each slot is limited to pokemon or certain types of mount). 1/3 of trainers of the routes battles in singles, 1/3 battles in doubles, and the other 1/3 you can choose to play against using single or doubles. Each gym is specialized either in singles or in doubles. 6 of each. Singles and a doubles elite 3, after each, champions of singles and doubles.
I wanna mention that the Water totem in USUM has permanent rain, which makes the Araquanid's damage a lot stronger. It also has an Electric reducing berry, for good measure.
the fact it has water bubble ability means that a mon that should be neutral to fire is virtually quad resistant to it in that scenario. its really funny how araquinid had the potentail to be one of the strong bug types but it still kinda has gimped stats.
Honestly I wouldn't bash it that hard. I completely understand your sentiment, isn't it normal for open world games to have areas that are higher leveled than others? I wouldn't necessarily call it dumb because there's a clear reasoning behind the decision, it's just that the execution ended up feeling lackluster.
I've seen a lot of people complain about the same thing: the lack of level scaling prevents players from challenging the different gyms/bases/titans in the order that they wanted. Which I think is one of the biggest flaws of this game, if not the worst.
I don't mind. I of course would have loved to try true level scaling at least once, just to see how it works in Pokémon. I play a lot of RPGs that are meant to be played linear, BUT you can technically go into late game areas and get broken stuff. You'll be punished by high level enemies and probably will die a lot, but you rarely are blocked by invisible walls or people telling you you shouldn't be there yet. I like when games do it that way.
@@CammyMeeleTea I'm guessing you're referring to Xenoblade? Yeah that's exactly what I was touching upon. Again, while I understand the want for level scaling and I think it could've been nice, having the option to take down the 8th and strongest gym leader first on your own volition and having it actually be possible wouldn't be as gratifying if they scaled down to your level. In that sense, it's arguable there would possibly be even less challenge, considering nothing would be able to be considerably higher than you. It also begs the question, what do you do if you want to train lower level Pokemon? If the whole world scales to your level, then you end up having no weaker areas either. All in all, it is genuinely a tough game design decision which isn't as easy as adding a level scaling switch and having everything work out. Because of this, it makes complete sense why they implemented it how they did, though to reiterate one last time, I'm not trying to just defend Game Freak and I understand your qualms, I just think there's more nuance to the situation.
@@thekirbyguy4576 I don't think your first point really makes much sense. With level scaling, the first gym leader you fight wouldn't be the last and strongest. It would be whichever you fought last.
Funny thing: I played a rom hack called Pokémon Unbound where they do the whole gym leader terrain thing which they also do for the Elite 4, with changes in difficulty mode sometimes changing the effect. Here are the gyms and E4 in their respective order: Grass Gym: The battle field gets foggy which you can get rid of by using sandstorm/defog with the battle being a double battle. Dark Gym: Bad emotions effect the battlefield which do damage per turn unless you’re a dark, ghost or psychic type, or have the ability oblivious or magic guard Flying Gym: A permanent tailwind that only affects flying types is on the battlefield (For those unaware, tailwind doubles speed). On insane difficulty, (the highest difficulty), This gets stacked with a delta stream which removes all of the flying types weaknesses. Normal Gym: The battle is an Inverse Battle meaning the type chart is flipped. And since normal isn’t resistant to anything, nor is anything weak to normal, this makes it by far the best typing in inverse battles. Electric and Steel Gym: The battle is a double battle with the battlefield having a permanent magnet rise. On insane, this is compounded with a permanent electric terrain. Fighting Gym: The battle has a ring challenge which effects vary with each difficulty. On Vanilla, It stops you from using Psychic/Flying moves; On Difficult it stops you from using Flying/Fairy moves. On Expert, the battlefield has a “weighted trick room” which makes it so that the heavier the Pokémon, the faster they are ignoring speed stats entirely. On insane, this is compounded with a fairy move ban. Water Gym: The battle is a Camomons battle which means the Pokémon’s first two moves determine its type, while the battlefield is permanently rainy, On expert and insane, this changes to permanent and irreplaceable heavy rainfall which fizzles out fire moves. Bug Gym: The Battle is a Benjamin Butterfree battle which makes it so that when a Pokémon gets knocked out, it devolves if it has a previous form. If not, the Pokémon faints. The Pokémon forgets any moves that its prior form doesn’t learn upon devolution. Ground E4: The battle is a double battle that has a permanent and irreplaceable heavy sandstorm which is a powered up sandstorm which buffets you for more damage and boosts the special defense of ground types. Fairy E4: The battlefield has a permanent misty terrain and has pixies which raise the lowest defense stat of all fairies. Ghost E4: The battle has a ghostly aura which basically gives all ghosts multiscale. Dragon E4: The battlefield has a rainbow that basically gives all dragons serene grace.
I think one really cool way to make a Ghost gym interesting is having Perish Song automatically used, as it teaches you the importance of having a safe switch-in to defensive Pokemon, like Gastrodon.
Level scaling kind of gives you a sense of unique experience I think. With Paldea for example, set levels make everything feel timeless. I can challenge the last gym, get rocked, go off and train on everything else, and then when I get back it’s like nothing has changed. No real time has passed. With level scaling, I could struggle against a gym and have a choice to make. If I go fight other gyms to get stronger, when I come back to this one I know it’ll have improved too. It reinforces the feeling that things take place when I’m doing other things. Time goes on. I feel like that’s more immersive.
Plus the replayability would be interesting too. As it is, I can in theory do things in a different order but it’s still the same gym, same team, same AI tactics. I’d love to play through once in a certain order and have the gyms get stronger, have more pokemon, and use more advanced battle strategy. Then play a second time in a whole different order, and those teams are different. Now the first gyms I battled with one or two unevolved pokemon are now complex four or five deep teams. I can get this sense of how a gym leader would build and develop a team from the two, to picking up three or four more, to evolving them, and having these eight versions of their team ranging from introductory to a worthy test of your Elite Four preparedness.
In theory... you could also bring a Galvanize or Pixelate or Aerialate mon. Since it turns normal moves into their respective types... Sylveon Hyper Voice perhaps?
The problem: one of the slots will only use ghost and the other normal. Unless there are ghosts using follow me, you can just focus on destroying the 3 normal pokemon, because a ghost will not switch to the normal slot, because you are fighting two trainers at once.
I loved it when you talked about gym leaders being mentors/puzzle bosses, using strategies that other trainers are unable to use. Probably trick room or terrains may suffice. But I was very inclined to when you said gym fields that only allow specific types of battle. I love it so much, but I am forever scarred by the sufferings I experienced while playing Pokemon Rejuvenation. They implemented those mechanics well... almost too well. Wonderful game though, and I highly recommend it for any player, both casual and challenge-run. Also, simply put... have a gym leader for all 18 types scattered in the region, but three specific gym leaders must be faced after having a certain number of badges and for plot. It make the player get accustomed to various types of strategies as they wish and they would only need 8 badges to enter the league, similar to the anime.
That sounds like an interesting way of doing it. Plus, if there's a ton of optional gyms, batches of 2 or 3 could be created at different levels, and then there could a semi-open world, happy medium. You know what I mean? Weaker field effects at the start, strong field effects at the end, and the choice between the Gyms you fight for each stage of the game. It would be a great test to see how how its received before going to full blown level scaling.
For difficulty I very much like the gyms that have one sided effects (ie bug and the second dark idea), but for the theme you’re going for (gyms are teaching you how to use their type) I think the ones that equally impact both sides, but the gym team is just built around it are the way to go since the one sided strats aren’t really replicable and just make the type seem beefier than they really are
I really like your ideas. I wish they would make them standard, bring back set mode, keep the open world design, make shiny Pokémon marked, and many other things to show they actually care about the user experience.
Been working on my own Pokemon project which also have field effects for gyms (inspired by their use in Pokemon Reborn) Heres what I have for field effects: Permeant Tailwind for Gym Leader Permenant Stealth Rocks Switching is treated as Baton pass (both participants) Permeant water sport effect. fire pokemon/moves do not benefit from sunlight Permeant electric terrain, misty terrain, psychic terrain Permeant trick room
I really wish scarlet and violet had some kind of level scaling. I played it and went left from the first big town and around the map until I reached it again. Because of this the early mid game was very difficult, and the last three gyms were 30 levels below me
Pokemon reborn (fan game i know) i think handles gym battles perfectly. The game has a bunch of new terrain types and weather effects and each gym leader uses one and has their whole team based around using it to their advantage, while still having a way for the player to easily flip it on their heads if they come prepared. They are linear which kinda sucks but it makes sense in lore because you are actively being hunted by a terrorist organization for a large portion of the game and dont exactly have time to be picky with who you fight
@@leebulger7112 The game has whole wiki page devoted to the new terrains as there are over 30 (although the game calls them fields). Some examples that come to mind are the Factory Field, which can be charged by an electric move and from then on all electric attacks get a 1.5 times multiplier as well as buffing some steel type moves The Glitch Field which removes Dark, Steel, and Fairy typings and utilizes generation 1 battle mechanics and Water Surface which buffs water and electric moves, debuffs fire and ground moves, and can transition into the Underwater field if the move dive is used which can then passively damage pokemon that are weak to water.
What I think would be an interesting add is being able to see each gym at its full strength. I’m thinking a final trial before the elite four cut with an intermission of story so that by the time you get to the elite four you feel fully tested.
Love it! My suggestion would be; a double edged sword for gym effects. A positive and negative. My thoughts: Electric: Tension In The Air + all electric moves X1.5 power + X1.5 Speed for electric types - All steel types cannot switch out. -A static shock can randomly hit after a turn, dealing 10% damage. Fighting: Battle Honor + All Fighting moves X1.5 Damage, + All physical attacks ALWAYS HIT. -K.O appointment means you cannot switch victor, until KO’d by opponent
OK for the gimmicks you can lookup lockstin castform of every type video, he has some good ones. As for combos : easely normalize field plus shedinja with disable If you look up actual gym leaders you can see how they actually teach some stuff to the player. Like onyx being a physical wall or tate and lysa being the unskippable double battle with sunny day and moonlight. But the problem with open world is that you can't properly stack mechanics, because you don't know which ones the player already knows. Like imagine you come to the gym and it has grassy terrain, sunny day growth and solar beam. That would be brutal if you haven't seen any of those combos before.
Before I comment on the actual video, I'd like to note that I only recently learned that your username is an Ace Attorney reference and I absolutely love it. ❤ So, I like your concepts here. Going back to the fanbase's complaints that I cited back during your type chart video, gyms in particular get it a lot. A few years back I saw a video on the matter (unfortunately, idr by whom) that summed it up nicely: Leader: "Your skills are remarkable, you're an exceptional strategist!" Player: "Dude, I just clicked Giga Drain three times in a row". While the most common proposal is to replace type specialties with something like strategies or gimmicks (e.g. a leader specializing in status effects, or stat modifiers, etc), you propose an equally interesting experiment by building on type specialties by adding "home advantages"; the point suddenly isn't just "bring something with the type advantage and win", but rather "What will you do when you're forced to fight the opponent on their terms?"
It's actually pure coincidence. I drink tea, but don't like soda. So I've had the nickname since 2001, but I also do play Ace Attorney and have encountered that character in 2010. (That game got 0 marketing so I didn't know it was out, and don't remember when it came out.) It's kind of like how Zelda, Mario, and Luigi are real names but their popularity makes everything look like a reference to them. Or like people who actually go by the nicknames DK, Cammy, etc. I think the funniest example is a person I knew called who goes by Gus as opposed to his full name. The last name is Amos. In the system and on work schedules, it's abbreviated and put in alphabetical order. The problem is that it's abbreviated as "Amo, Gus." So the younger folks see a reference, that this 50 year old guy does not understand, and will never understand.
@@CammyMeeleTea Wait, so "Meele" is a real surname? I thought it had been made up for the game for the sake of the pun (a pun that, despite the "Tea" in your handle, I didn't realize until after meeting the AA character). Before learning of Cammy Meele from Ace Attorney, I actually assumed the "Cammy" in your username was in reference to the _other_ Cammy, the one from Street Fighter (funny, two people named "Cammy" and both are from Capcom), and thought "Meele" was just a separate reference to something I didn't know about, with "Tea" being actual tea but not knowing exactly why it was there (because again, I hadn't caught the pun yet). Regarding the game, you must have played it shortly after it dropped, then: Ace Attorney Investigations is from 2009, but didn't release in the West until early 2010.
I dont know how many romhacks you play, but there are a lot that like to use weather and terrains for gym battles. You should look into Pokemon Unbound (romhack of Fire Red) for some really cool ideas being implemented. And the npcs in game even give hints on how to beat certain gym mechanics, like bringing a keeney pokemon or Defog for the foggy (decreased accuracy) gym. I'm still watching but this is everything my friends and I have been talking about for new games or fan made regions and such. Great video so far.
I think specific gyms could be locked up until you beat one or two others, so you can have slightly more complex mechanics behind them. They could lock the use of HMs behind gym badge thresholds, so you could fight the normal gym with a more involved mechanic only later when the mechanic would actually impact you, and make you think wisely.
Here’s some alternative ideas to add on: For the psychic gym, you could be forced into permanent trick room, forcing you to slow your team down. For Dark, you could add on a Switcharoo effect, and have some of the opposing trainers hold potentially harmful items such as lagging tail or toxic orb. Or alternatively from that, make an aura that gives all pokemon prankster. For grass, you could have an ingrain effect take place, kinda like grassy terrain, except pokemon can’t switch either. Likewise for bug you could do a permanent infestation status. (Water, Ground, and Fire could do that too with their spins, tombs, and pools, but it fits bug better IMO) For Rock, an automatic salt cure effect could be applied, punishing two rock weaknesses. For Dragon, (Bit of an out there one), you could have a raging aura, where pokemon tend to overexert themselves. It’d give all moves a boost in power, but give them all a downside (Like a status or stat reduction). inspired by Draco Meteor and Outrage.
Personally, what I believe should be done isn’t a permanent terrain, since that's not competitive. Though, I do believe that there should be a "gimmick", like the Ghost-type Gym being a Spikes-stacking Choice Specs spammer. So, since I want to make Gym Leaders as competitive as possible, I believe they should all have 6 Pokémon, and are able to choose between 24 different Pokémon. The Player will be forced to change their strategy on the fly, depending on which 6 of the 24 the Gym Leader chose. Secondly, the idea of monotype teams has always bothered me, so that should be undone. However, they will still have most of their Pokémon be of a single type; 3 monotype, 3 coverage. Lore-wise, a Gym Leader is paid for being a strong trainer. Losing to 10-year-olds isn’t something they should be. Ultra Beasts and Paradox Pokémon could be used depending on the Gen and mode that is set, while 1 Mega per team would be mandatory to make the Ace make more sense. The AI should also make its move only after the Player, like in Gen 1. This means that the AI would always make the correct play, such as predicting switches.
Really interesting video^^ Are you aware of Pokemon Reborn ? Because it follows your philosophy for the gym leader fights (Electric terrain for the Electric gym, Chess field for the Psychic gym, etc.) Also, you forgot timestamp for the Dragon type
I was searching the comments for this because I was sure I wasn’t the only one who instantly thought of Reborn when I heard this description Tbf it’s completely excusable for people to come up with similar ideas here because gym leaders having a field effect that benefits their team is a genuinely amazing idea and also helps otherwise overlooked Pokémon really shine
Seconding Pokemon Reborn. Also Pokemon Unbound. It even has an *inverse battle* for the normal gym. Meaning all weaknesses are resistances and resistances are weaknesses. So they resist Fighting, and everything else is neutral.
As someone who is currently in the makes of a pokemon dnd campaign right now, I find this video to be very useful as I am still working on the gym leaders and their respective gyms and gym challenges. I'll defo keep some of these ideas in mind, good vid :)
Very good ideas in this video. I'd also like to "scratch" the idea of "type-specific gyms" and make it more generic. Like, the "gym in the desert" could be either your fire or ground gym, and the leader's team can include a variety of pokemon that suit the desert/sun/heat theme rather than just have a specific type. This also gives a good reason for the gimmick (permanent weather, etc) instead of simply having it cause its a gym. Going a step further, i'd also like them to kinda scratch the idea of 8 gyms and go for something else that fills this purpose. You visit a number of towns and cities for X purpose and you get to battle their most powerful trainer which has a team matching the theme of the town they're in. But i know this is too much to ask and GF wont ever shake the formula in mainline games. Another thing that might work (or maybe as a simple toggle on/off) is restricting the player to use the same amount of pokemon the leader has. You shouldnt fight 6 vs 3.
Those are all interesting options. It's actually what I thought they were doing in Alola with the Trials when I first heard about it. Trial of the Storms (Rain and Electric Terrain), Trial of the Jungle (Grass and Sun), etc. Even if Game Freak doesn't adopt them, a modder absolutely could and would. That's the fun of the topics we cover on this channel. It's really fun to imagine what else pokémon could do and how it could be played.
I think water and psychic would be a pretty unexpected but powerful combo. A strong swift swim Pokémon, like wave crash floatzel or basculegion, combined with priority being blocked by psychic terrain could easily lead to a sweep against unprepared challengers
I liked the ideas here, but i would probably make a couple tweaks. 1. Gyms should have a minimum level and scale up from there. The minimum level would correspond to the difficulty of the surrounding area, allowing players to still skip gyms for an extra challenge. 2. All of the gym effects should affect both teams, but favor the gym leader. Weather and terrain already do this, but i think all of the gym effects should. For example, if the bug gym had a sticky web, it would be on both sides, and the bug gym leader could use flying bugs, or maybe trick room to take advantage of it. You could also make the effects not effect the gyms pokemon type, or only affect the gym's type. I.e. a tailwind for both teams that only affects flying types. 3. I would not have the gym effect active for the earliest gym battles. No need to throw that much information on a new player. One thing that wasnt mentioned in the video was the game gimmicks. How would you improve their usage in gym battles? In S/V gym leaders would always terrastilize their final pokemon, even if it was detrimental, which felt kind of lame.
I agree with your points, maybe something like this would work better for a DLC like the Indigo Disk where there or some future post game thing so that the player is already used to gym battles. Regarding what Gym Leaders would do with generational gimmicks, I intentionally didn't address that. This isn't specifically a Scarlet and Violet pokémon video. It's a general "what if" scenario for the mainline series. If we think about it from the perspective of future games, there isn't really a guarantee about which gimmick comes back. So I won't be factoring in generational gimmicks. Things like proper AI timing for switching and gimmick use is definitely outside of the purview of this video. And I have 0 experience with AI coding, so I don't think I'd be able to go into depth about it aside from saying, it'd be nice if they had better AI. Obviously not so strong that children can't play.
The only cool usage of Terastalization is the first three gym leaders because they actually enhance the Pokémon. Teddiursa becomes a ticking time bomb with Fury Cutter. Sudowoodo is finally Grass type, but also has a good combo. Finally, Mismagius becomes better Eelektross.
Ironically enough, I think the future of Pokémon games actually comes from Pokémon Masters out of all places. Not quite what they did, but similar, also inspired a bit by Sun and Moon. The whole thing with Masters is that the trainers are the focus instead of the Pokémon, and Trainer Passives are absolutely a thing that could drastically change base pokémon. And in a very forgotten and not oftenly brought up about Sun and Moon, you had to do small side quest things to unlock things like trainer poses and styles (like how you start the battle and throw your balls and all). In the battle agaisnt Lusamine, she also boosts her Pokémon like a Totem Battle but not really. Imagine the following: You have a hard fought battle against a fire type gym leader. Now, as a reward, you get a new passive ability that you can equip of "Fire Type Mastery" that can be either about getting less damage from fire, or dealing more damage to fire, or having one free burn heal; etc. You do enough side quests and you get something that helps you farm money or BP. Something else that increases catch rates, etc. Making your human character be customizable with abilities that modify base game is probably one of the best things pokémon could do for increased complexity and an easy "sidequest fodder". Gives all sorts of reasons to battle and rematch many trainers and do little hangouts with them too. Of course this things wouldn't count for PvP, but I think they are a perfect complement to what you are saying. Having Gym Leaders have their own passives (differently equipped in each battle) that introduce arena hazards or buff their side could be a breath of fresh air. ... and not to beat on a dead horse, but also level scalling and battle facilities that bring back doubles, contests, triples, rotation, inverse, horde, and royales should probably be a given. The whole point of facilities should be to challenge and change gameplay and not have all of them be just another skin of the battle tower.
I really love that idea of earning passives and masteries. They already did that with the hidden badge boosts, and somewhat do that with mechanics like affection letting you live and remove statuses. It wouldn't be a problem either. Just like always, these "single player/main character" privileges can be shut off in link battles and competitive play. We already don't trigger affection in VGC, so it's definitely possible.
I like these ideas! And i honestly hope that at some point developers will be given time and freedom to actually make something like this happen in main line games.
Random idea for a ghost gym, what if you don't know what Pokemon is until you attack it. I know that sounds more Zoruark, but it makes me think of the Pokemon Tower in gen 1 where they first apear as generic ghosts. It could fit a theme of ghost Pokemon appearing spooky and mysteries at first, and at higher levels could include more immunities through type and abilities that would keep the disguise up another turn. Kind of like Mimikyu pretending to be a ghostly Pikachu before its disguise is broken.
What about for every gym there's a boost or cheat on it or the opponents side of the field, as of right now there is one for most types: Water - Rain Fire - Sun Ice - Snow Ground - Sand (always thought it was weird Sandstorm was a rock move, (they need to change it to ground instead, all other sand moves are Ground-type) Grass - Grass Terrain Electric - Electric Terrain Fairy - Misty Terrain Psychic - Psychic Terrain Rock - Stealth Rock Poison - Toxic Spikes Steel - Spikes (Spikes should be a Steel move that effects all types) Bug - Sticky Web Flying - Tailwind Normal, Dragon, Fighting, Ghost and Dark all don't have a field effect move that would benefit them, so No clue what you could do with those types.
Since steel types are often slow, I think that a permanent trick room could fit it well. I know it doesn't make thematic sense but it could be very difficult since most of the super effective types against steel are generally faster than it
I think we are limiting ourself with just types here. Raihan in gen 8 alredy has the bases, him being a Sandstorm gym instead of any type. The game doesnt really have that many mechanics, but some could be worked around. A super heavy team that uses weight moves. A trick room gym. Weather teams. A hazzard stacker+forced switches A gym with low acuraccy moves and workarounds like gravity or telepath or no guard. Maybe just themed teams, we could have an ancien pokemon gym, a crab gym, an outherwordly gym.
Most broken combo is Grass Fire. Speed control is *everything* in competitive, particularly in VGC. Chlorophyll doubling speed on any pokemon with Sleep Powder or Spore (Venusaur or Lilligant) is oppressive. Halved damage from *two* of Fire's three weaknesses. The only threats to Grass that aren't annihilated by Fire are Flying types. Many Fire types (usually physical attackers) also get electric coverage with Wild Charge, Thunder Fang, Thunder Punch, or more. Not to mention Weather Ball nuking ice and bug pokemon. Chandelure and other special attackers get Energy Ball and Solar Beam. Many Fire types are frail, but if they can live one attack, Grassy terrain let's them heal up to face other threats. The biggest weakness is Trick Room, but with negative priority, whatever opponent Mon is setting up trick room is going to get easily doubled and shut down, or just put to sleep. Sun Boosted Flare Blitz + Weather Ball is going to ruin all but the beefiest defensive options. Grass also doesn't have to be passive. Lilligant can quiver dance. Growth is doubly effective. Sun Boosted Heat Wave is perfect for doubles while the Grass pokemon is setting up. Rock pokemon have to worry about grass pokemon or the dozens of fighting and grass moves that fire types have as coverage. Your only hope is trick room or priority moves. And both are pretty easy to deal with under these conditions.
Rather than "Normalize", I think a more interesting field condition for a Normal gym would be that weather, terrain, screens, and abilities (except Truant and Slow Start) are nullified. Stat changes could also be eliminated every few turns as in the move Haze.
Great video! I think these are good ideas to make the games more challenging and interesting for experienced players. However, I think it’s also important to keep in mind that a large portion of Pokémon’s target audience is small children, many of whom may be playing this game as their first in the series. I know that back when I was little even easier Pokémon games could present a challenge just because I didn’t understand all the mechanics yet. It would be very discouraging for a child if their first gym challenge kept ending with auto-poison wearing them down, or strong terrain-boosted STAB moves being too much to handle, while they’re still struggling with just type matchups. GameFreak seems to be keeping this audience in mind as one of their first priorities when creating games, so it might be a good idea to keep a few really toned-down options available for gyms meant to introduce basic concepts in the early game. Or, perhaps some of these gimmicks could only kick in once the trainers have at least a few badges. This might not be the sort of content you want to address in your videos, but I just figured I’d put forth some ideas that you may want to consider since you asked for QA in the comments. Loved the topic and hope to see more in the future!
Agreed, you got the point of exactly what I was going for. The main goal is to introduce effects, but not be purely difficult. Like I said at the start, the target demographic is children, it shouldn't be Dark Souls. The gyms should introduce the effects, but abuse them only as the game progresses. For a lot of these early gyms, the gym leader will only have 2 Pokémon. Probably a level 7 and a level 9 for example, and they both would probably only have Tackle and a debuff (Leer, Growl) and then maybe the second one would have one STAB move. Though that isn't necessary, after all Brock doesn't have Rock STAB at all. I already thought that this would be better for a linear game, so that it's easier to balance to be a fair lesson. Given your points, it makes me think this idea is better suited to linear style games or just the post-game rematches. Thank you for all the feedback! I really appreciate it.
Oh, forgot to mention, I love that the Scarlet and Violet is a school that actually explains things STAB and the mathematics of battle. It's brilliant and should honestly stay in the games in some way. If not a trainer school, then something like the Teachy TV (but not as slow). Though in the interest of keeping every generation fresh and new, we might lose those really useful features, because they chose to remove them.
100% agree with everything you’ve said here. None of the challenges you’ve laid out are bad, they’re just perhaps confusing or tough for new players and require extra thought to be put into proper balancing. The school and Teachy TV-like services are ideas that should definitely be kept, but their optional nature means that a good portion of the new player base won’t necessarily engage with them (though I’m NOT saying they should be required). For the impatient kids, the ones who learn better by doing, or the kids who straight-up can’t read, the first gym (or major challenge) needs to be something that tests their understanding of the most basic concepts and not have a lot of major twists on top of that, in my opinion. However, wildly brainstorming further, it could be possible to make these gimmicks work in non-linear games with careful design. For example, maybe the gyms with tougher gimmicks can be placed further away from the starting area, so even a new player will presumably have more experience before getting there? Or maybe a non-gym boss fight is required before getting to the gym, and it’s a more basic battle that tests the player’s skills without the harder gimmick! Like a rival, who then warns the player about the tricks the gym might spring on them. Doing any of this would just require a LOT of careful thought, balancing, and implementation, which I’m frankly not sure GameFreak can currently afford with their yearly release schedule 😢 Thanks for making these sorts of videos! You’ve got my mind bouncing off the walls speculating about what might work.
Absolutely, don't worry, I don't take it as criticism. I leave walls of text because I'm excited to talk about possibilities. I'm definitely more of the person who comes up with wild solutions and ideas faster than I can actually refine them. I'm a designer, than an engineer, with is funny because for my actual job, I'm more of an engineer than a designer. Definitely agree that the rival should stay and test the player. I think all the games, especially the new ones, do a great job using the rivals to teach mechanics. In Scarlet and Violet you fight the rival at least 2 times before starting the gym challenge right? I forget, but the start of the game keeps you on the straight and narrow until the gym challenge really begins. They should keep doing that (and add fast forward, skipping, and other QoL settings for repeat playthroughs or people who learn better by doing). Maybe the effects just have a nerfed power increase to compensate for the fact that they last forever. If normal, expiring Electric terrain is a 1.5x boost, then maybe the permanent terrain boost scales with badges too. (Though something that complex might be too much for Game Freak, and it should just be a mod). Post game only might be the easiest way to implement it, honestly.
I really like the idea of setting permanent effects in gyms. I know a lot of people like Pokemon being easy but that's why i am once again asking for DIFFICULTY SETTINGS. it's a damn shame that so many cool effects are straight up not used in trainer battles in the game to try to keep things easy, but if pokemon actually put more than the bare minimum effort into their game design they would have difficulty settings in more than one game. Suggestions that weren't in the video: -Ghost: permanent Pressure on your side instead of incremental spites. this could be really annoying with ghost stallmons -Normal or fighting: scrappy for opponent's pokemon. unsure about this though cause i think using immunities should be encouraged, but putting it on the table -Dark: serene grace boost for opponents, or maybe just boost flinch chance. Dark pulse and bite flinch cheese. encourages using faster pokemon or inner focus and fits thematically with dark type "fighting dirty" -Dragon: beast boost for enemy team, to emphasize dragons "raging" and becoming unstoppable as they KILL more. this could be really tough in the late game with fully evolved pseudos -Psychic: permanent trick room. This could be used for another type with generally slow pokemon though as psychic has terrain already but trick room is a psychic type move and associated with psychic types
I wouldn't use unremovable stuff, like the unremovable terrain, because if it's removable, the player can build strategies around it. Of course, the gym leader should still have moves to set their terrain and stuff back up and it should be active at the start of the battle and active again after the terrain e.t.c. of the player ends
I generally love this concept, it’s something the rom hack Unbound did. I do have one critique tho. I think a gym should be more than just a challenge, it should be a showcase of the power of that type. As such, the Normal type gym concept doesn’t display a strength of Normal types, it shows a weakness. The neutrality of normal types is a bad thing in that gym, not a good thing. In Unbound the Normal gym is an inverse battle, where normal types are overpowered. If you don’t want to copy Unbound, then maybe have a gym where all types become neutral, there’s no super effective damage or resistances. Or maybe have it give the gym leader a stat buff or other benefits. Healing every few turns like Chancey, Audino, Miltank, or Indeedee, as the healer archetype is commonly a normal type. Acupressure on the gym leader every few turns. Maybe a random move fires off every turn, like Metronome, or the gym leader gets a free protect every few turns and can still attack. There’s lots of iconic things about normal types to work with
I agree and disagree. I said in the video multiple times that Gym Leaders should demonstrate the strength and weaknesses of the types, or give you experience with the type. If players are going to get better they need to see both the strengths AND weaknesses of something, and I believe I showed both. Though it ultimately comes down to what people see as strengths and weaknesses of Normal to begin with, so I'll explain what I was thinking. The way that I went about is for this gym to shows the duality of Normal the type and Normal type pokémon. Using STAB Normal moves makes you neutral on nearly everything, but if you use non-STAB coverage moves you can hit everything using your massive coverage. So you either deal 1.5 x damage by spamming mostly neutral STAB or aim for x2 and x4 non-STAB damage on coverage. This is different from other types that can actually stack STAB and super-effective damage. Every other type can stack these damage boosts except for Normal, and that is a weakness compared to other types. Especially types like Dragon that are also mostly neutral offensively. Normal is mostly neutral defensively, with one weakness and one immunity. Which is a strength and weakness entirely dictated by stats, ability, and movepool. Normally, when fighting a Normal gym, the player has abundant coverage, and the Normal gym leader spams normal moves and support moves, and maybe has a little coverage. This time we're flipping it on its head: - The trainer now doesn't deal super effective damage at all, so the trainer has to comprehend how to battle without using supereffective damage as a crutch. They actually need to engage with different damage modifiers for a change. It's a chance to use stat increases, stat reductions, and other effects to get ahead. - The gym leader is unaffected by this. The Gym Leader is free to spam Normal STAB, and tap into the often bottomless movepools of Normal-types for coverage, since that's usually what Normal-types are, generalists. - Since the gym leader is unaffected, buffing is just as important as debuffing, and you still have to consider your own typings to defensively resist the overwhelming coverage Normal types have. Because again, the gym leader can unga bunga coverage moves. - Both of these together force you to deal with the extremes of the doubleedged sword that comes with generally being a neutral generalist. I still think this is a weak gym idea. The gym would be trivial in the early game, and very difficult in the end game. This means that it doesn't work in an open world game and should be placed in a linear game. The next issue is that, the concept is too difficult for a pokémon campaign, Pokémon at its core is a combat system heavily overreliant on type-effectiveness, so while buffs and other effects certainly do matter, building a gym around that would probably be too much for children and newcomers. There is absolutely a way to implement this in to a real game, but it would have to be watered down so much that there isn't a point to it. This one is best left to a mod/romhack. I like your Normal type gym idea more for the real games. Random gimmicks and goofy stuff that Normal type can do is definitely a better representation of the type from the perspective of children and casuals, and wouldn't break the campaign of the game, or confuse newbies. It's easier to code and explain to players. Thanks, truly.
@@CammyMeeleTea thanks for the discussion! I also agree and disagree with you haha. I think certain types that have high neutrality with their STAB is generally seen as a positive. By limiting the player and taking away their tools it can feel bad, easily misconstruing the point. It could be seen that Normal is so weak it had to nerf you to level the playing field. Or make you play with nothing but normal so you can’t use your strong options. I’ll use Radical Red as an example again. There’s a Dragon gym leader that gives you the restriction that you can’t use Fairy type Pokémon against him. This inherently makes you feel like Fairy is just too strong and Dragon can’t hold up on its own otherwise. The part of the philosophy I agree with most is when the gym leaders get to show off the strengths of their types. Rocks gets Sandstorm for free so you can see how incredible sand teams are. It doesn’t take away your choices, and helps overshadow the fact that Rock truly is one of the weakest types. So that’s my nitpick, that the Normal Gym in question chooses to limit the player instead, making Normal look weak by comparison.
Gym leaders should incorporate more of the game’s mechanics which glad they do in galar and paldea and somewhat in Alola (Totems and stuff) but there’s plenty more mechanics to add to the gym leaders, gen 3 weather can be incorporated and some double battles , gen 5 has triple battles can be rematch option Gen 6 missed out on megas
Pokemon Unbound does kinda that in every gym - FLYING: not grounded pokemon get a tailwind boost - DARK: non dark, psychic and ghost get damaged every turn - NORMAL: inverse battle - GRASS: fog - STEEL AND ELECTRIC: levitate for those types
Regarding dragon, why not an effect that prevents confusion, enabling the use of Outrage and Thrash without consequences, and these are powerful moves that Dragon types usually have. This would also prevent the player of using the usually high Attack stat that Dragon types have against themselves
8:02 I disagree with the hidden ability sentiment. If a gym leader's Pokemon having a hidden ability make them more challenging (like instead of Plusle the Electric gym leader you came up with could have an Ampharos with Plus as its hidden ability), then by all means, they should have them. Plus, it's not like hidden abilities are super powerful and ultra rare. For example, because a Flying gym leader's Pidgeot having Big Pecks as its ability doesn't mean that they would be brutally hard. I actually am doing this with the E4 in the fangame I'm making. They all have themes (except the second E4 member specializing in Bug types since he would be an old man with more traditional views relating to the Pokemon League), and they would have Misty Terrain, a new weather called Pheromones, Strong Winds, and Electric Terrain respectively.
In the real world, gyms exist for training. I wonder what the games would be like if that same concept were applied to Pokemon Gyms: They exist to train Pokemon of a certain type, and you progress by proving your ability to successfully use that type (rather than proving your ability to just defeat that type).
Nessa's drednaw has its hidden ability and she is only the second gym I know that in the lore Galar's gym leader are elite four and champion level trainers but still
What about adding permanent Rain in the electric gym if it is after badge 5, Giving Both Terrain and weather at the same time. This gives a challenege in later gyms making have Thunder 100% accuracy. Add you could even something to the team like Helioisk with Dry skin so it recovers HP too.
Out of curiosity, since you’ve decided on having the gyms use man made/technologically set perpetual gimmicks for their types, is there a reason you chose something like intermittent whirlwinds for flying types instead of perpetual Delta Stream?
When a Pokémon with Delta Stream enters the battle or a Pokémon gains the Ability, a unique weather condition called "strong winds" is created. In the video I said, "Flying gyms can get perpetual Tailwind, strong winds, automatic Defog every couple of turns, or automatic Whirlwind at the end of every 3-5 turns."
Their name coincidentally matches with mine, but I'm really old and this nickname was used for me since 2001. (Way before Miles Edgeworth - Ace Attorney: Investigations came out.)
I dont like the tag teams. We as player are single trainer that is fighting 2 people. Specially con competitive. Makes more sense to double battle a single person. Also, is kinda messy: one of them ocupy the left stop and other the right? There is limitation in a switch. If i finish all pokemon of ine of them it turns into a singles battle, even if the other has 3 pokemon left? Each will only bring 3 pokemon? Id rather let the trainer add pokemon of other types that take advantage of their type mechanic. Fire type trainer can just have like 2 not fire pokemon to take advantsge of sun. One of them could be a chlorophyll grass pokemon, the other could be waking wake. It also can teach that sinergies of type and battle modifiers could be not only into two specific types.
I'm a little confused about your comment. Are you confused about how to mechanically implement a double battle based on the number of trainers? In game, since Generation 3, we've had two AI trainers approach you (a single player for a double battle multiple times through the campaign. The game has even gone far enough to make it so that if two different, unrelated trainers see you at the same time, they will team up for a double battle against you. These trainers can be fought as individuals in single battles, or in pairs in double Battles. They use 1-3 pokémon, so it works either way. Next, in real VGC even if you show up with a team of 6, you only pick 4, right? So the gym leaders pairing up are usually old enough to do simple math, and it would be very easy for them to work out that they should only use 3 Pokémon each to fight you, a trainer with 6 Pokémon. In terms of mechanical and coding implementation, it's been done before back in 2003, just with normal trainers instead of multiple Gym Leaders. I hope that makes sense.
READ ME:
Hello! Just a reminder that looking for improvement in something doesn't necessarily mean that it is something bad. Gym Leaders are an excellent staple to the series that serve as challenge and assessment for the player and trainers. Right now, Gym Leaders showcase single types, and sometimes showcase the TM that they will give you. I want to expand on those concepts.
Other Things:
- The Fighting and Grass sections have noticeably different audio because those sections got corrupted, I don't know why they did. I could have re-recorded, but since I'm a workaholic, it's obviously healthier to tell myself "Done is better than perfect" for a hobby.
- Pay attention to clarifying words like "most", "many", "tend to", "usually", "mainly", "rarely", "potentially", "possibly", etc. These words do not mean "all", "100%", "never". When proposing ideas, the point is to establish as many possibilities as you can, test them, assess the resources for implementation, and then finally confidently implement them. I have 0 experience with modding games, so this channel mostly sticks to exploring the realm of what is possible and the potential effects.
Gym combos:
Ghost + Normal
You can't hit the ghost pokemon and you lose too much pp or hp
Counter play: Mold break, Scrappy, Choiced Miltank + Body slam, toxic, leech seed
Ground + Fire
Ware moves are weakened by weather,
Counter play: Dragon types, Levitate, Gliscor, Ground types,
I personally would advocate for a gym's battlefield effects to be capable of being removed/overwritten (yet still otherwise permanent). Newer players may feel clever if they can even the playing field or turn it to their advantage.
@@Tethloach1 Ghost/Normal doesn't stop Dark types, so moves like Crunch, Knock Off, and Night Slash would be good counters
i honestly feel like boss battles should be double battles since that’s pokemon’s official competitive battle format
I totally agree. It's so weird that the official competitive format is hardly present during the main story of the series.
Yeah. Even some things like getting a move that only works in doubles in the middle of your journey becomes poinless. There is no indication of competitive play during game journey.
In my gen 10 wishlist, we would just have 3 teams of 6 pokemon at same time.
One team for singles, other team for doubles, and a team of mounts (in which each slot is limited to pokemon or certain types of mount).
1/3 of trainers of the routes battles in singles, 1/3 battles in doubles, and the other 1/3 you can choose to play against using single or doubles.
Each gym is specialized either in singles or in doubles. 6 of each.
Singles and a doubles elite 3, after each, champions of singles and doubles.
Yuck. I hate doubles battles.
I wanna mention that the Water totem in USUM has permanent rain, which makes the Araquanid's damage a lot stronger. It also has an Electric reducing berry, for good measure.
the fact it has water bubble ability means that a mon that should be neutral to fire is virtually quad resistant to it in that scenario. its really funny how araquinid had the potentail to be one of the strong bug types but it still kinda has gimped stats.
Paldea not having gym scaling is easily the dumbest decision gamefreak has made. It literally defeats the purpose of being open world.
Honestly I wouldn't bash it that hard. I completely understand your sentiment, isn't it normal for open world games to have areas that are higher leveled than others? I wouldn't necessarily call it dumb because there's a clear reasoning behind the decision, it's just that the execution ended up feeling lackluster.
I've seen a lot of people complain about the same thing: the lack of level scaling prevents players from challenging the different gyms/bases/titans in the order that they wanted. Which I think is one of the biggest flaws of this game, if not the worst.
I don't mind. I of course would have loved to try true level scaling at least once, just to see how it works in Pokémon.
I play a lot of RPGs that are meant to be played linear, BUT you can technically go into late game areas and get broken stuff. You'll be punished by high level enemies and probably will die a lot, but you rarely are blocked by invisible walls or people telling you you shouldn't be there yet.
I like when games do it that way.
@@CammyMeeleTea I'm guessing you're referring to Xenoblade? Yeah that's exactly what I was touching upon. Again, while I understand the want for level scaling and I think it could've been nice, having the option to take down the 8th and strongest gym leader first on your own volition and having it actually be possible wouldn't be as gratifying if they scaled down to your level. In that sense, it's arguable there would possibly be even less challenge, considering nothing would be able to be considerably higher than you. It also begs the question, what do you do if you want to train lower level Pokemon? If the whole world scales to your level, then you end up having no weaker areas either. All in all, it is genuinely a tough game design decision which isn't as easy as adding a level scaling switch and having everything work out. Because of this, it makes complete sense why they implemented it how they did, though to reiterate one last time, I'm not trying to just defend Game Freak and I understand your qualms, I just think there's more nuance to the situation.
@@thekirbyguy4576 I don't think your first point really makes much sense. With level scaling, the first gym leader you fight wouldn't be the last and strongest. It would be whichever you fought last.
Funny thing: I played a rom hack called Pokémon Unbound where they do the whole gym leader terrain thing which they also do for the Elite 4, with changes in difficulty mode sometimes changing the effect. Here are the gyms and E4 in their respective order:
Grass Gym: The battle field gets foggy which you can get rid of by using sandstorm/defog with the battle being a double battle.
Dark Gym: Bad emotions effect the battlefield which do damage per turn unless you’re a dark, ghost or psychic type, or have the ability oblivious or magic guard
Flying Gym: A permanent tailwind that only affects flying types is on the battlefield (For those unaware, tailwind doubles speed). On insane difficulty, (the highest difficulty), This gets stacked with a delta stream which removes all of the flying types weaknesses.
Normal Gym: The battle is an Inverse Battle meaning the type chart is flipped. And since normal isn’t resistant to anything, nor is anything weak to normal, this makes it by far the best typing in inverse battles.
Electric and Steel Gym: The battle is a double battle with the battlefield having a permanent magnet rise. On insane, this is compounded with a permanent electric terrain.
Fighting Gym: The battle has a ring challenge which effects vary with each difficulty. On Vanilla, It stops you from using Psychic/Flying moves; On Difficult it stops you from using Flying/Fairy moves. On Expert, the battlefield has a “weighted trick room” which makes it so that the heavier the Pokémon, the faster they are ignoring speed stats entirely. On insane, this is compounded with a fairy move ban.
Water Gym: The battle is a Camomons battle which means the Pokémon’s first two moves determine its type, while the battlefield is permanently rainy, On expert and insane, this changes to permanent and irreplaceable heavy rainfall which fizzles out fire moves.
Bug Gym: The Battle is a Benjamin Butterfree battle which makes it so that when a Pokémon gets knocked out, it devolves if it has a previous form. If not, the Pokémon faints. The Pokémon forgets any moves that its prior form doesn’t learn upon devolution.
Ground E4: The battle is a double battle that has a permanent and irreplaceable heavy sandstorm which is a powered up sandstorm which buffets you for more damage and boosts the special defense of ground types.
Fairy E4: The battlefield has a permanent misty terrain and has pixies which raise the lowest defense stat of all fairies.
Ghost E4: The battle has a ghostly aura which basically gives all ghosts multiscale.
Dragon E4: The battlefield has a rainbow that basically gives all dragons serene grace.
I think one really cool way to make a Ghost gym interesting is having Perish Song automatically used, as it teaches you the importance of having a safe switch-in to defensive Pokemon, like Gastrodon.
Level scaling kind of gives you a sense of unique experience I think. With Paldea for example, set levels make everything feel timeless. I can challenge the last gym, get rocked, go off and train on everything else, and then when I get back it’s like nothing has changed. No real time has passed.
With level scaling, I could struggle against a gym and have a choice to make. If I go fight other gyms to get stronger, when I come back to this one I know it’ll have improved too. It reinforces the feeling that things take place when I’m doing other things. Time goes on. I feel like that’s more immersive.
Plus the replayability would be interesting too. As it is, I can in theory do things in a different order but it’s still the same gym, same team, same AI tactics. I’d love to play through once in a certain order and have the gyms get stronger, have more pokemon, and use more advanced battle strategy. Then play a second time in a whole different order, and those teams are different. Now the first gyms I battled with one or two unevolved pokemon are now complex four or five deep teams. I can get this sense of how a gym leader would build and develop a team from the two, to picking up three or four more, to evolving them, and having these eight versions of their team ranging from introductory to a worthy test of your Elite Four preparedness.
normal ghost team up in the post game would be brutal. Forces the player to use like foresight
Yeah, or Scrappy. Glad I preemptively banned Normal/Ghost from being on the Normal roster.
In theory... you could also bring a Galvanize or Pixelate or Aerialate mon. Since it turns normal moves into their respective types... Sylveon Hyper Voice perhaps?
The problem: one of the slots will only use ghost and the other normal. Unless there are ghosts using follow me, you can just focus on destroying the 3 normal pokemon, because a ghost will not switch to the normal slot, because you are fighting two trainers at once.
Rain in the electric gym.
100% accurate thunder would be killer
I loved it when you talked about gym leaders being mentors/puzzle bosses, using strategies that other trainers are unable to use. Probably trick room or terrains may suffice. But I was very inclined to when you said gym fields that only allow specific types of battle. I love it so much, but I am forever scarred by the sufferings I experienced while playing Pokemon Rejuvenation. They implemented those mechanics well... almost too well. Wonderful game though, and I highly recommend it for any player, both casual and challenge-run.
Also, simply put... have a gym leader for all 18 types scattered in the region, but three specific gym leaders must be faced after having a certain number of badges and for plot. It make the player get accustomed to various types of strategies as they wish and they would only need 8 badges to enter the league, similar to the anime.
That sounds like an interesting way of doing it. Plus, if there's a ton of optional gyms, batches of 2 or 3 could be created at different levels, and then there could a semi-open world, happy medium. You know what I mean? Weaker field effects at the start, strong field effects at the end, and the choice between the Gyms you fight for each stage of the game. It would be a great test to see how how its received before going to full blown level scaling.
@@CammyMeeleTea Yeah
For difficulty I very much like the gyms that have one sided effects (ie bug and the second dark idea), but for the theme you’re going for (gyms are teaching you how to use their type) I think the ones that equally impact both sides, but the gym team is just built around it are the way to go since the one sided strats aren’t really replicable and just make the type seem beefier than they really are
For the fighting effect you could do no flinching on the opponents side :)
They're too disciplined to flinch. I love it.
Inner focus permanent? No flinching. And *no Intimidate*
I really like your ideas. I wish they would make them standard, bring back set mode, keep the open world design, make shiny Pokémon marked, and many other things to show they actually care about the user experience.
Been working on my own Pokemon project which also have field effects for gyms (inspired by their use in Pokemon Reborn)
Heres what I have for field effects:
Permeant Tailwind for Gym Leader
Permenant Stealth Rocks
Switching is treated as Baton pass (both participants)
Permeant water sport effect. fire pokemon/moves do not benefit from sunlight
Permeant electric terrain, misty terrain, psychic terrain
Permeant trick room
I really wish scarlet and violet had some kind of level scaling. I played it and went left from the first big town and around the map until I reached it again. Because of this the early mid game was very difficult, and the last three gyms were 30 levels below me
Pokemon reborn (fan game i know) i think handles gym battles perfectly. The game has a bunch of new terrain types and weather effects and each gym leader uses one and has their whole team based around using it to their advantage, while still having a way for the player to easily flip it on their heads if they come prepared. They are linear which kinda sucks but it makes sense in lore because you are actively being hunted by a terrorist organization for a large portion of the game and dont exactly have time to be picky with who you fight
What are the new types of Weather and terrain?
@@leebulger7112 The game has whole wiki page devoted to the new terrains as there are over 30 (although the game calls them fields).
Some examples that come to mind are the Factory Field, which can be charged by an electric move and from then on all electric attacks get a 1.5 times multiplier as well as buffing some steel type moves
The Glitch Field which removes Dark, Steel, and Fairy typings and utilizes generation 1 battle mechanics
and Water Surface which buffs water and electric moves, debuffs fire and ground moves, and can transition into the Underwater field if the move dive is used which can then passively damage pokemon that are weak to water.
@@elfofdusk That's interesting I was expecting one for each type but that's also cool where can I find the Wiki page?
@@leebulger7112 I'm going to try to link it here but if I can't it should be the first result if you google "Pokemon Reborn fields"
I hope you do actually make that video of making teams to implement gym teams for every type, that sounds pretty interesting
What I think would be an interesting add is being able to see each gym at its full strength. I’m thinking a final trial before the elite four cut with an intermission of story so that by the time you get to the elite four you feel fully tested.
Love it!
My suggestion would be; a double edged sword for gym effects. A positive and negative.
My thoughts:
Electric: Tension In The Air
+ all electric moves X1.5 power + X1.5 Speed for electric types
- All steel types cannot switch out. -A static shock can randomly hit after a turn, dealing 10% damage.
Fighting: Battle Honor
+ All Fighting moves X1.5 Damage, + All physical attacks ALWAYS HIT.
-K.O appointment means you cannot switch victor, until KO’d by opponent
OK for the gimmicks you can lookup lockstin castform of every type video, he has some good ones.
As for combos : easely normalize field plus shedinja with disable
If you look up actual gym leaders you can see how they actually teach some stuff to the player. Like onyx being a physical wall or tate and lysa being the unskippable double battle with sunny day and moonlight. But the problem with open world is that you can't properly stack mechanics, because you don't know which ones the player already knows. Like imagine you come to the gym and it has grassy terrain, sunny day growth and solar beam. That would be brutal if you haven't seen any of those combos before.
What about a focus energy effect for the fighting type gym?
Before I comment on the actual video, I'd like to note that I only recently learned that your username is an Ace Attorney reference and I absolutely love it. ❤
So, I like your concepts here. Going back to the fanbase's complaints that I cited back during your type chart video, gyms in particular get it a lot. A few years back I saw a video on the matter (unfortunately, idr by whom) that summed it up nicely:
Leader: "Your skills are remarkable, you're an exceptional strategist!"
Player: "Dude, I just clicked Giga Drain three times in a row".
While the most common proposal is to replace type specialties with something like strategies or gimmicks (e.g. a leader specializing in status effects, or stat modifiers, etc), you propose an equally interesting experiment by building on type specialties by adding "home advantages"; the point suddenly isn't just "bring something with the type advantage and win", but rather "What will you do when you're forced to fight the opponent on their terms?"
It's actually pure coincidence. I drink tea, but don't like soda. So I've had the nickname since 2001, but I also do play Ace Attorney and have encountered that character in 2010. (That game got 0 marketing so I didn't know it was out, and don't remember when it came out.)
It's kind of like how Zelda, Mario, and Luigi are real names but their popularity makes everything look like a reference to them. Or like people who actually go by the nicknames DK, Cammy, etc.
I think the funniest example is a person I knew called who goes by Gus as opposed to his full name. The last name is Amos. In the system and on work schedules, it's abbreviated and put in alphabetical order. The problem is that it's abbreviated as "Amo, Gus." So the younger folks see a reference, that this 50 year old guy does not understand, and will never understand.
@@CammyMeeleTea Wait, so "Meele" is a real surname? I thought it had been made up for the game for the sake of the pun (a pun that, despite the "Tea" in your handle, I didn't realize until after meeting the AA character).
Before learning of Cammy Meele from Ace Attorney, I actually assumed the "Cammy" in your username was in reference to the _other_ Cammy, the one from Street Fighter (funny, two people named "Cammy" and both are from Capcom), and thought "Meele" was just a separate reference to something I didn't know about, with "Tea" being actual tea but not knowing exactly why it was there (because again, I hadn't caught the pun yet).
Regarding the game, you must have played it shortly after it dropped, then: Ace Attorney Investigations is from 2009, but didn't release in the West until early 2010.
I dont know how many romhacks you play, but there are a lot that like to use weather and terrains for gym battles. You should look into Pokemon Unbound (romhack of Fire Red) for some really cool ideas being implemented. And the npcs in game even give hints on how to beat certain gym mechanics, like bringing a keeney pokemon or Defog for the foggy (decreased accuracy) gym.
I'm still watching but this is everything my friends and I have been talking about for new games or fan made regions and such. Great video so far.
I've played 0 romhacks. I've only recently tried using Minecraft mods. I'll give that one a try. I'm also interested in Radical Red.
I think specific gyms could be locked up until you beat one or two others, so you can have slightly more complex mechanics behind them. They could lock the use of HMs behind gym badge thresholds, so you could fight the normal gym with a more involved mechanic only later when the mechanic would actually impact you, and make you think wisely.
Here’s some alternative ideas to add on:
For the psychic gym, you could be forced into permanent trick room, forcing you to slow your team down.
For Dark, you could add on a Switcharoo effect, and have some of the opposing trainers hold potentially harmful items such as lagging tail or toxic orb. Or alternatively from that, make an aura that gives all pokemon prankster.
For grass, you could have an ingrain effect take place, kinda like grassy terrain, except pokemon can’t switch either.
Likewise for bug you could do a permanent infestation status. (Water, Ground, and Fire could do that too with their spins, tombs, and pools, but it fits bug better IMO)
For Rock, an automatic salt cure effect could be applied, punishing two rock weaknesses.
For Dragon, (Bit of an out there one), you could have a raging aura, where pokemon tend to overexert themselves. It’d give all moves a boost in power, but give them all a downside (Like a status or stat reduction). inspired by Draco Meteor and Outrage.
These are some great ideas, thanks!
Personally, what I believe should be done isn’t a permanent terrain, since that's not competitive.
Though, I do believe that there should be a "gimmick", like the Ghost-type Gym being a Spikes-stacking Choice Specs spammer. So, since I want to make Gym Leaders as competitive as possible, I believe they should all have 6 Pokémon, and are able to choose between 24 different Pokémon. The Player will be forced to change their strategy on the fly, depending on which 6 of the 24 the Gym Leader chose. Secondly, the idea of monotype teams has always bothered me, so that should be undone. However, they will still have most of their Pokémon be of a single type; 3 monotype, 3 coverage. Lore-wise, a Gym Leader is paid for being a strong trainer. Losing to 10-year-olds isn’t something they should be. Ultra Beasts and Paradox Pokémon could be used depending on the Gen and mode that is set, while 1 Mega per team would be mandatory to make the Ace make more sense. The AI should also make its move only after the Player, like in Gen 1. This means that the AI would always make the correct play, such as predicting switches.
Really interesting video^^
Are you aware of Pokemon Reborn ? Because it follows your philosophy for the gym leader fights (Electric terrain for the Electric gym, Chess field for the Psychic gym, etc.)
Also, you forgot timestamp for the Dragon type
Oh, it turns out I put the timestamp as 10:28 instead of 11:28 so it didn't show up even though it was in the description, thanks.
I was searching the comments for this because I was sure I wasn’t the only one who instantly thought of Reborn when I heard this description
Tbf it’s completely excusable for people to come up with similar ideas here because gym leaders having a field effect that benefits their team is a genuinely amazing idea and also helps otherwise overlooked Pokémon really shine
I haven't heard of it. But it sounds interesting. I've been catching up with a ton of other game series, so I haven't even looked into pokémon mods.
Seconding Pokemon Reborn. Also Pokemon Unbound. It even has an *inverse battle* for the normal gym. Meaning all weaknesses are resistances and resistances are weaknesses. So they resist Fighting, and everything else is neutral.
As someone who is currently in the makes of a pokemon dnd campaign right now, I find this video to be very useful as I am still working on the gym leaders and their respective gyms and gym challenges. I'll defo keep some of these ideas in mind, good vid :)
Glad it helps, it's funny how many DnD players have been stoked to use these ideas, I hadn't considered Pokémon DnDs.
Very good ideas in this video.
I'd also like to "scratch" the idea of "type-specific gyms" and make it more generic. Like, the "gym in the desert" could be either your fire or ground gym, and the leader's team can include a variety of pokemon that suit the desert/sun/heat theme rather than just have a specific type. This also gives a good reason for the gimmick (permanent weather, etc) instead of simply having it cause its a gym.
Going a step further, i'd also like them to kinda scratch the idea of 8 gyms and go for something else that fills this purpose.
You visit a number of towns and cities for X purpose and you get to battle their most powerful trainer which has a team matching the theme of the town they're in.
But i know this is too much to ask and GF wont ever shake the formula in mainline games.
Another thing that might work (or maybe as a simple toggle on/off) is restricting the player to use the same amount of pokemon the leader has. You shouldnt fight 6 vs 3.
Those are all interesting options. It's actually what I thought they were doing in Alola with the Trials when I first heard about it. Trial of the Storms (Rain and Electric Terrain), Trial of the Jungle (Grass and Sun), etc.
Even if Game Freak doesn't adopt them, a modder absolutely could and would. That's the fun of the topics we cover on this channel. It's really fun to imagine what else pokémon could do and how it could be played.
Safeguard x Lucky Chant would be nice for dragons since you’d need to deal with their might somewhat
I think water and psychic would be a pretty unexpected but powerful combo. A strong swift swim Pokémon, like wave crash floatzel or basculegion, combined with priority being blocked by psychic terrain could easily lead to a sweep against unprepared challengers
I liked the ideas here, but i would probably make a couple tweaks.
1. Gyms should have a minimum level and scale up from there. The minimum level would correspond to the difficulty of the surrounding area, allowing players to still skip gyms for an extra challenge.
2. All of the gym effects should affect both teams, but favor the gym leader. Weather and terrain already do this, but i think all of the gym effects should. For example, if the bug gym had a sticky web, it would be on both sides, and the bug gym leader could use flying bugs, or maybe trick room to take advantage of it. You could also make the effects not effect the gyms pokemon type, or only affect the gym's type. I.e. a tailwind for both teams that only affects flying types.
3. I would not have the gym effect active for the earliest gym battles. No need to throw that much information on a new player.
One thing that wasnt mentioned in the video was the game gimmicks. How would you improve their usage in gym battles? In S/V gym leaders would always terrastilize their final pokemon, even if it was detrimental, which felt kind of lame.
I agree with your points, maybe something like this would work better for a DLC like the Indigo Disk where there or some future post game thing so that the player is already used to gym battles.
Regarding what Gym Leaders would do with generational gimmicks, I intentionally didn't address that. This isn't specifically a Scarlet and Violet pokémon video. It's a general "what if" scenario for the mainline series. If we think about it from the perspective of future games, there isn't really a guarantee about which gimmick comes back. So I won't be factoring in generational gimmicks.
Things like proper AI timing for switching and gimmick use is definitely outside of the purview of this video. And I have 0 experience with AI coding, so I don't think I'd be able to go into depth about it aside from saying, it'd be nice if they had better AI. Obviously not so strong that children can't play.
The gimmick of this theoretical game could actually be the terrain/weather/Aura abuse. Similar to Gen 3's gimmick simply being Weather.
The only cool usage of Terastalization is the first three gym leaders because they actually enhance the Pokémon. Teddiursa becomes a ticking time bomb with Fury Cutter. Sudowoodo is finally Grass type, but also has a good combo.
Finally, Mismagius becomes better Eelektross.
@@iantaakalla8180 don't forget Larry's super STAB facade on Staraptor.
Ghost gyms would be absolutely brutal if any Shadow Tag shenanigans happen
This would unironically make for a cool battle gimmick for a future main series title.
Ironically enough, I think the future of Pokémon games actually comes from Pokémon Masters out of all places. Not quite what they did, but similar, also inspired a bit by Sun and Moon.
The whole thing with Masters is that the trainers are the focus instead of the Pokémon, and Trainer Passives are absolutely a thing that could drastically change base pokémon. And in a very forgotten and not oftenly brought up about Sun and Moon, you had to do small side quest things to unlock things like trainer poses and styles (like how you start the battle and throw your balls and all). In the battle agaisnt Lusamine, she also boosts her Pokémon like a Totem Battle but not really.
Imagine the following: You have a hard fought battle against a fire type gym leader. Now, as a reward, you get a new passive ability that you can equip of "Fire Type Mastery" that can be either about getting less damage from fire, or dealing more damage to fire, or having one free burn heal; etc. You do enough side quests and you get something that helps you farm money or BP. Something else that increases catch rates, etc.
Making your human character be customizable with abilities that modify base game is probably one of the best things pokémon could do for increased complexity and an easy "sidequest fodder". Gives all sorts of reasons to battle and rematch many trainers and do little hangouts with them too. Of course this things wouldn't count for PvP, but I think they are a perfect complement to what you are saying.
Having Gym Leaders have their own passives (differently equipped in each battle) that introduce arena hazards or buff their side could be a breath of fresh air.
... and not to beat on a dead horse, but also level scalling and battle facilities that bring back doubles, contests, triples, rotation, inverse, horde, and royales should probably be a given. The whole point of facilities should be to challenge and change gameplay and not have all of them be just another skin of the battle tower.
I really love that idea of earning passives and masteries. They already did that with the hidden badge boosts, and somewhat do that with mechanics like affection letting you live and remove statuses.
It wouldn't be a problem either. Just like always, these "single player/main character" privileges can be shut off in link battles and competitive play. We already don't trigger affection in VGC, so it's definitely possible.
I like these ideas! And i honestly hope that at some point developers will be given time and freedom to actually make something like this happen in main line games.
I absolutely love this idea. I just think it would get treated as a generation’s gimmick instead of a just added feature
Random idea for a ghost gym, what if you don't know what Pokemon is until you attack it. I know that sounds more Zoruark, but it makes me think of the Pokemon Tower in gen 1 where they first apear as generic ghosts. It could fit a theme of ghost Pokemon appearing spooky and mysteries at first, and at higher levels could include more immunities through type and abilities that would keep the disguise up another turn.
Kind of like Mimikyu pretending to be a ghostly Pikachu before its disguise is broken.
Grass + Psychic Terrain. They get priority grassy glide and you can't use priority against them.
What about for every gym there's a boost or cheat on it or the opponents side of the field, as of right now there is one for most types:
Water - Rain
Fire - Sun
Ice - Snow
Ground - Sand (always thought it was weird Sandstorm was a rock move, (they need to change it to ground instead, all other sand moves are Ground-type)
Grass - Grass Terrain
Electric - Electric Terrain
Fairy - Misty Terrain
Psychic - Psychic Terrain
Rock - Stealth Rock
Poison - Toxic Spikes
Steel - Spikes (Spikes should be a Steel move that effects all types)
Bug - Sticky Web
Flying - Tailwind
Normal, Dragon, Fighting, Ghost and Dark all don't have a field effect move that would benefit them, so No clue what you could do with those types.
Since steel types are often slow, I think that a permanent trick room could fit it well. I know it doesn't make thematic sense but it could be very difficult since most of the super effective types against steel are generally faster than it
I think we are limiting ourself with just types here.
Raihan in gen 8 alredy has the bases, him being a Sandstorm gym instead of any type.
The game doesnt really have that many mechanics, but some could be worked around.
A super heavy team that uses weight moves.
A trick room gym.
Weather teams.
A hazzard stacker+forced switches
A gym with low acuraccy moves and workarounds like gravity or telepath or no guard.
Maybe just themed teams, we could have an ancien pokemon gym, a crab gym, an outherwordly gym.
Dude this is literally a dream. I'd kill for it to be true ;-;
Most broken combo is Grass Fire. Speed control is *everything* in competitive, particularly in VGC. Chlorophyll doubling speed on any pokemon with Sleep Powder or Spore (Venusaur or Lilligant) is oppressive.
Halved damage from *two* of Fire's three weaknesses.
The only threats to Grass that aren't annihilated by Fire are Flying types. Many Fire types (usually physical attackers) also get electric coverage with Wild Charge, Thunder Fang, Thunder Punch, or more. Not to mention Weather Ball nuking ice and bug pokemon.
Chandelure and other special attackers get Energy
Ball and Solar Beam.
Many Fire types are frail, but if they can live one attack, Grassy terrain let's them heal up to face other threats.
The biggest weakness is Trick Room, but with negative priority, whatever opponent Mon is setting up trick room is going to get easily doubled and shut down, or just put to sleep.
Sun Boosted Flare Blitz + Weather Ball is going to ruin all but the beefiest defensive options.
Grass also doesn't have to be passive. Lilligant can quiver dance. Growth is doubly effective. Sun Boosted Heat Wave is perfect for doubles while the Grass pokemon is setting up.
Rock pokemon have to worry about grass pokemon or the dozens of fighting and grass moves that fire types have as coverage.
Your only hope is trick room or priority moves. And both are pretty easy to deal with under these conditions.
Rather than "Normalize", I think a more interesting field condition for a Normal gym would be that weather, terrain, screens, and abilities (except Truant and Slow Start) are nullified. Stat changes could also be eliminated every few turns as in the move Haze.
Great video! I think these are good ideas to make the games more challenging and interesting for experienced players.
However, I think it’s also important to keep in mind that a large portion of Pokémon’s target audience is small children, many of whom may be playing this game as their first in the series. I know that back when I was little even easier Pokémon games could present a challenge just because I didn’t understand all the mechanics yet. It would be very discouraging for a child if their first gym challenge kept ending with auto-poison wearing them down, or strong terrain-boosted STAB moves being too much to handle, while they’re still struggling with just type matchups.
GameFreak seems to be keeping this audience in mind as one of their first priorities when creating games, so it might be a good idea to keep a few really toned-down options available for gyms meant to introduce basic concepts in the early game. Or, perhaps some of these gimmicks could only kick in once the trainers have at least a few badges.
This might not be the sort of content you want to address in your videos, but I just figured I’d put forth some ideas that you may want to consider since you asked for QA in the comments. Loved the topic and hope to see more in the future!
Agreed, you got the point of exactly what I was going for. The main goal is to introduce effects, but not be purely difficult. Like I said at the start, the target demographic is children, it shouldn't be Dark Souls. The gyms should introduce the effects, but abuse them only as the game progresses. For a lot of these early gyms, the gym leader will only have 2 Pokémon. Probably a level 7 and a level 9 for example, and they both would probably only have Tackle and a debuff (Leer, Growl) and then maybe the second one would have one STAB move. Though that isn't necessary, after all Brock doesn't have Rock STAB at all.
I already thought that this would be better for a linear game, so that it's easier to balance to be a fair lesson. Given your points, it makes me think this idea is better suited to linear style games or just the post-game rematches.
Thank you for all the feedback! I really appreciate it.
Oh, forgot to mention, I love that the Scarlet and Violet is a school that actually explains things STAB and the mathematics of battle. It's brilliant and should honestly stay in the games in some way. If not a trainer school, then something like the Teachy TV (but not as slow). Though in the interest of keeping every generation fresh and new, we might lose those really useful features, because they chose to remove them.
100% agree with everything you’ve said here. None of the challenges you’ve laid out are bad, they’re just perhaps confusing or tough for new players and require extra thought to be put into proper balancing.
The school and Teachy TV-like services are ideas that should definitely be kept, but their optional nature means that a good portion of the new player base won’t necessarily engage with them (though I’m NOT saying they should be required). For the impatient kids, the ones who learn better by doing, or the kids who straight-up can’t read, the first gym (or major challenge) needs to be something that tests their understanding of the most basic concepts and not have a lot of major twists on top of that, in my opinion.
However, wildly brainstorming further, it could be possible to make these gimmicks work in non-linear games with careful design. For example, maybe the gyms with tougher gimmicks can be placed further away from the starting area, so even a new player will presumably have more experience before getting there? Or maybe a non-gym boss fight is required before getting to the gym, and it’s a more basic battle that tests the player’s skills without the harder gimmick! Like a rival, who then warns the player about the tricks the gym might spring on them.
Doing any of this would just require a LOT of careful thought, balancing, and implementation, which I’m frankly not sure GameFreak can currently afford with their yearly release schedule 😢
Thanks for making these sorts of videos! You’ve got my mind bouncing off the walls speculating about what might work.
Absolutely, don't worry, I don't take it as criticism. I leave walls of text because I'm excited to talk about possibilities. I'm definitely more of the person who comes up with wild solutions and ideas faster than I can actually refine them. I'm a designer, than an engineer, with is funny because for my actual job, I'm more of an engineer than a designer.
Definitely agree that the rival should stay and test the player. I think all the games, especially the new ones, do a great job using the rivals to teach mechanics. In Scarlet and Violet you fight the rival at least 2 times before starting the gym challenge right? I forget, but the start of the game keeps you on the straight and narrow until the gym challenge really begins.
They should keep doing that (and add fast forward, skipping, and other QoL settings for repeat playthroughs or people who learn better by doing).
Maybe the effects just have a nerfed power increase to compensate for the fact that they last forever. If normal, expiring Electric terrain is a 1.5x boost, then maybe the permanent terrain boost scales with badges too. (Though something that complex might be too much for Game Freak, and it should just be a mod).
Post game only might be the easiest way to implement it, honestly.
I really like the idea of setting permanent effects in gyms. I know a lot of people like Pokemon being easy but that's why i am once again asking for DIFFICULTY SETTINGS. it's a damn shame that so many cool effects are straight up not used in trainer battles in the game to try to keep things easy, but if pokemon actually put more than the bare minimum effort into their game design they would have difficulty settings in more than one game.
Suggestions that weren't in the video:
-Ghost: permanent Pressure on your side instead of incremental spites. this could be really annoying with ghost stallmons
-Normal or fighting: scrappy for opponent's pokemon. unsure about this though cause i think using immunities should be encouraged, but putting it on the table
-Dark: serene grace boost for opponents, or maybe just boost flinch chance. Dark pulse and bite flinch cheese. encourages using faster pokemon or inner focus and fits thematically with dark type "fighting dirty"
-Dragon: beast boost for enemy team, to emphasize dragons "raging" and becoming unstoppable as they KILL more. this could be really tough in the late game with fully evolved pseudos
-Psychic: permanent trick room. This could be used for another type with generally slow pokemon though as psychic has terrain already but trick room is a psychic type move and associated with psychic types
I wouldn't use unremovable stuff, like the unremovable terrain, because if it's removable, the player can build strategies around it. Of course, the gym leader should still have moves to set their terrain and stuff back up and it should be active at the start of the battle and active again after the terrain e.t.c. of the player ends
I generally love this concept, it’s something the rom hack Unbound did. I do have one critique tho. I think a gym should be more than just a challenge, it should be a showcase of the power of that type. As such, the Normal type gym concept doesn’t display a strength of Normal types, it shows a weakness. The neutrality of normal types is a bad thing in that gym, not a good thing. In Unbound the Normal gym is an inverse battle, where normal types are overpowered. If you don’t want to copy Unbound, then maybe have a gym where all types become neutral, there’s no super effective damage or resistances. Or maybe have it give the gym leader a stat buff or other benefits. Healing every few turns like Chancey, Audino, Miltank, or Indeedee, as the healer archetype is commonly a normal type. Acupressure on the gym leader every few turns. Maybe a random move fires off every turn, like Metronome, or the gym leader gets a free protect every few turns and can still attack. There’s lots of iconic things about normal types to work with
I agree and disagree. I said in the video multiple times that Gym Leaders should demonstrate the strength and weaknesses of the types, or give you experience with the type. If players are going to get better they need to see both the strengths AND weaknesses of something, and I believe I showed both. Though it ultimately comes down to what people see as strengths and weaknesses of Normal to begin with, so I'll explain what I was thinking.
The way that I went about is for this gym to shows the duality of Normal the type and Normal type pokémon. Using STAB Normal moves makes you neutral on nearly everything, but if you use non-STAB coverage moves you can hit everything using your massive coverage. So you either deal 1.5 x damage by spamming mostly neutral STAB or aim for x2 and x4 non-STAB damage on coverage. This is different from other types that can actually stack STAB and super-effective damage. Every other type can stack these damage boosts except for Normal, and that is a weakness compared to other types. Especially types like Dragon that are also mostly neutral offensively. Normal is mostly neutral defensively, with one weakness and one immunity. Which is a strength and weakness entirely dictated by stats, ability, and movepool.
Normally, when fighting a Normal gym, the player has abundant coverage, and the Normal gym leader spams normal moves and support moves, and maybe has a little coverage.
This time we're flipping it on its head:
- The trainer now doesn't deal super effective damage at all, so the trainer has to comprehend how to battle without using supereffective damage as a crutch. They actually need to engage with different damage modifiers for a change. It's a chance to use stat increases, stat reductions, and other effects to get ahead.
- The gym leader is unaffected by this. The Gym Leader is free to spam Normal STAB, and tap into the often bottomless movepools of Normal-types for coverage, since that's usually what Normal-types are, generalists.
- Since the gym leader is unaffected, buffing is just as important as debuffing, and you still have to consider your own typings to defensively resist the overwhelming coverage Normal types have. Because again, the gym leader can unga bunga coverage moves.
- Both of these together force you to deal with the extremes of the doubleedged sword that comes with generally being a neutral generalist.
I still think this is a weak gym idea. The gym would be trivial in the early game, and very difficult in the end game. This means that it doesn't work in an open world game and should be placed in a linear game. The next issue is that, the concept is too difficult for a pokémon campaign, Pokémon at its core is a combat system heavily overreliant on type-effectiveness, so while buffs and other effects certainly do matter, building a gym around that would probably be too much for children and newcomers. There is absolutely a way to implement this in to a real game, but it would have to be watered down so much that there isn't a point to it. This one is best left to a mod/romhack.
I like your Normal type gym idea more for the real games. Random gimmicks and goofy stuff that Normal type can do is definitely a better representation of the type from the perspective of children and casuals, and wouldn't break the campaign of the game, or confuse newbies. It's easier to code and explain to players.
Thanks, truly.
@@CammyMeeleTea thanks for the discussion! I also agree and disagree with you haha. I think certain types that have high neutrality with their STAB is generally seen as a positive. By limiting the player and taking away their tools it can feel bad, easily misconstruing the point. It could be seen that Normal is so weak it had to nerf you to level the playing field. Or make you play with nothing but normal so you can’t use your strong options. I’ll use Radical Red as an example again. There’s a Dragon gym leader that gives you the restriction that you can’t use Fairy type Pokémon against him. This inherently makes you feel like Fairy is just too strong and Dragon can’t hold up on its own otherwise.
The part of the philosophy I agree with most is when the gym leaders get to show off the strengths of their types. Rocks gets Sandstorm for free so you can see how incredible sand teams are. It doesn’t take away your choices, and helps overshadow the fact that Rock truly is one of the weakest types. So that’s my nitpick, that the Normal Gym in question chooses to limit the player instead, making Normal look weak by comparison.
Gym leaders should incorporate more of the game’s mechanics which glad they do in galar and paldea and somewhat in Alola (Totems and stuff) but there’s plenty more mechanics to add to the gym leaders, gen 3 weather can be incorporated and some double battles , gen 5 has triple battles can be rematch option
Gen 6 missed out on megas
Pokemon Unbound does kinda that in every gym
- FLYING: not grounded pokemon get a tailwind boost
- DARK: non dark, psychic and ghost get damaged every turn
- NORMAL: inverse battle
- GRASS: fog
- STEEL AND ELECTRIC: levitate for those types
Regarding dragon, why not an effect that prevents confusion, enabling the use of Outrage and Thrash without consequences, and these are powerful moves that Dragon types usually have. This would also prevent the player of using the usually high Attack stat that Dragon types have against themselves
Clodsire with Water Absorb when Electric and Water Supergym: 😈
The normalize gimmick is super cool
Great Video!
8:02 I disagree with the hidden ability sentiment. If a gym leader's Pokemon having a hidden ability make them more challenging (like instead of Plusle the Electric gym leader you came up with could have an Ampharos with Plus as its hidden ability), then by all means, they should have them. Plus, it's not like hidden abilities are super powerful and ultra rare. For example, because a Flying gym leader's Pidgeot having Big Pecks as its ability doesn't mean that they would be brutally hard.
I actually am doing this with the E4 in the fangame I'm making. They all have themes (except the second E4 member specializing in Bug types since he would be an old man with more traditional views relating to the Pokemon League), and they would have Misty Terrain, a new weather called Pheromones, Strong Winds, and Electric Terrain respectively.
That was pretty cool, w video
In the real world, gyms exist for training. I wonder what the games would be like if that same concept were applied to Pokemon Gyms: They exist to train Pokemon of a certain type, and you progress by proving your ability to successfully use that type (rather than proving your ability to just defeat that type).
Yeah, imagine grinding in the Gyms and training to get new or cheaper TMs. (Since the series seems to have shifted back to single use TMs.)
Nessa's drednaw has its hidden ability and she is only the second gym I know that in the lore Galar's gym leader are elite four and champion level trainers but still
What about adding permanent Rain in the electric gym if it is after badge 5, Giving Both Terrain and weather at the same time.
This gives a challenege in later gyms making have Thunder 100% accuracy. Add you could even something to the team like Helioisk with Dry skin so it recovers HP too.
Where did you get that art of the Mystery Dungeon friend areas?
Bulbapedia.
Creaking Skull
Out of curiosity, since you’ve decided on having the gyms use man made/technologically set perpetual gimmicks for their types, is there a reason you chose something like intermittent whirlwinds for flying types instead of perpetual Delta Stream?
When a Pokémon with Delta Stream enters the battle or a Pokémon gains the Ability, a unique weather condition called "strong winds" is created.
In the video I said, "Flying gyms can get perpetual Tailwind, strong winds, automatic Defog every couple of turns, or automatic Whirlwind at the end of every 3-5 turns."
@@CammyMeeleTea Ah, I must have missed the strong winds part. I guess that's what I get for listening to the video in the background. Sorry.
Normal and ghost? If the normal effect didn't;t go away, the ghost trainer would be impossible to defeat.
Isnt that the name of that one Ace Attorney Investigations character whos the flight attendant
Their name coincidentally matches with mine, but I'm really old and this nickname was used for me since 2001. (Way before Miles Edgeworth - Ace Attorney: Investigations came out.)
Flying should definitely be just strong wind maybe.
If u want to be hardcore give electric pokemon rain for thunder spam
I mean, the obvious hardest combo would be normal and ghost, but thats a freebie lmao
U can counter normal type with pixilate steel types
i like the normalize effect, but i dont understand why tailwind is being activated, wouldnt it just do nothing since both sides speed are doubled?
I think the idea was only the gym leader would have the effect.
Yes!
I dont like the tag teams. We as player are single trainer that is fighting 2 people. Specially con competitive.
Makes more sense to double battle a single person.
Also, is kinda messy: one of them ocupy the left stop and other the right? There is limitation in a switch. If i finish all pokemon of ine of them it turns into a singles battle, even if the other has 3 pokemon left? Each will only bring 3 pokemon?
Id rather let the trainer add pokemon of other types that take advantage of their type mechanic.
Fire type trainer can just have like 2 not fire pokemon to take advantsge of sun. One of them could be a chlorophyll grass pokemon, the other could be waking wake.
It also can teach that sinergies of type and battle modifiers could be not only into two specific types.
I'm a little confused about your comment. Are you confused about how to mechanically implement a double battle based on the number of trainers?
In game, since Generation 3, we've had two AI trainers approach you (a single player for a double battle multiple times through the campaign.
The game has even gone far enough to make it so that if two different, unrelated trainers see you at the same time, they will team up for a double battle against you. These trainers can be fought as individuals in single battles, or in pairs in double Battles. They use 1-3 pokémon, so it works either way.
Next, in real VGC even if you show up with a team of 6, you only pick 4, right?
So the gym leaders pairing up are usually old enough to do simple math, and it would be very easy for them to work out that they should only use 3 Pokémon each to fight you, a trainer with 6 Pokémon.
In terms of mechanical and coding implementation, it's been done before back in 2003, just with normal trainers instead of multiple Gym Leaders.
I hope that makes sense.