>>24640052
Snorlax used to dominate Gen 2, it was almost considered Uber back then

Something in Gen 3 changed it, it was a perfect counter for it, such that it was almost certain that it was released so Snorlax wouldn't dominate Gen 3.

Honestly I forgot what it was, it's been a long time

>>24640072
bump, wondering what was the change

They do care, they're just awful at balancing.

Psychic type was OP in Gen 1, so they introduced Steel and Dark in Gen 2 to counter it. Since then, Psychic has become one of the worst typings and worst STABs in the game.

The Weather Wars ended because they nerfed weather-inducing abilities in Gen 6 so they only last five (or 8) turns now.

Their response to one or a few Pokémon/Megas being overpowered and overly centralising is to simply release even more powerful ones in the following game.

yes, a lot of changes made in gen 6 were obviously made with competitive in mind

>>24640072
Suicune or Weezing

>>24640072
Hariyama?

>>24640136
not at all, that shit was in UU from the moment it was released

>>24640133
suicune was already on gen 2? weezing I guess at least got levitate and will o wisp

>>24640100
None, just the general power creep while Snorlax himself didn't get anything good.

Same shit that happens every gen (ie Greninja is released and suddenly Starmie is shit)

>>24640156
I'm pretty sure there was a big change or introduction of a new pokemon/item/ability that was clearly made to counter snorlax, everyone was talking about it

maybe it could be the EV's change since it reduced a fuckload of snorlax's def

yeah, just look at drought/drizzle nerf

>>24640072

the change was more distribution of fighting types and moves and steel types and moves.

A little bit, but they only "balance" things with each changing generation...some examples..

-changing hyper beam so it isn't a musthave on almost every fucking guy like it was in Gen 1.
-adding dark type in generation 2 because psychic types were incredible.
-adding fairy types in generation 6 because dragon types were unstoppable. making fairy weak to poison which was always the most useless type pretty much.

I guarantee in "generation 7" that theyll change Greyninjas abilty for one..

>>24642354

Protean should work more like Color Change. You become Ice Type AFTER you use Ice Beam, then your next Ice Beam will be STAB.

Making Greninja an all-STAB Poké is just ridiculous

>>24642354
Greninja sucks though, I hope you don't think smogonshit is relevant

>>24640052
they really don't. they make certain goods steps towards balancing offense (the main problem in VGC) like removing gems and nerfing the base power of elemental moves. then they go and create absurdly OP megas. Wolfe Glick and a bunch of other good players agree offense is unbalanced, with megas you get punished too hard for being in a bad position or leading poorly. and yet, @shadeviera was able to win battle road gloria, japanese nationals and worlds in the same year so maybe not all is lost

>>24642433
no, colour change should be changed to be more like protean. Type changes before its hit.

Then it wouldn't be shit.
>resisting fire, water, grass, ice, electric, dark, poison, steel and psychic
>only being weak to ghost and dragon
>being immune to toxic, thunder wave, will o wisp and spore.
>has recover
>has stealth rock
It's as if it were steel type.

>>24642439
>12th most used pokemon on Battle Spot
>"Greninja sucks"

>>24640052
No, they only care about VGC because that's the one they make money from.

They've always put the multiplayer battling second place from the beginning, and it shows worse and worse. You can really only ever have a JRPG or a good multiplayer experience after all.

>>24642354
First one was an actual bug though, and the second two were because GF fucked up with what types they had. Ghost was based on physical attack at the time and only had Lick/Bug was shit. Then Dragons are still the most common uber type while they make them more and more powerful, so GF put themselves in a corner and needed a counter legendary so it could be more powerful than the dragons.

Why do people act like GameFreak cares more about balance than the game itself? Pokemon is an RPG, and I'm sure some of you have heard/seen this argument before, but isn't the competitive scene something that spawned out of the community and was taken up by Nintendo?

Because as far as I'm aware, every game is balanced a certain way; there's a reason starters evolve when they do, and why you find Bug-types so early-on but their effectiveness falls off. It's like equipment or team members in an RPG, and not necessarily like something that's 100% meant to be competitive.

Just look at shit like Mega-Fug as an example of that. I'm not going to use the shitty "lel gamefreek cant balance xd" meme, I just want to point out that it's the equivalent of a really powerful end-game weapon or something.

By all accounts the games are set-up that way, or so it seems, and it's been that way since the beginning. The buffing of Pokemon and balancing of other shit might be to HELP cater towards competitive, but I don't believe their specific goal in changing how things in Pokemon work is to balance it for competitive play.

>>24643306
Pokemon's gameplay is actually turn-based strategy first, RPG second. Both player and AI opponents have the exact same resource availability and their options in battle are a mirror match of each other. That's something no other RPG I can think of from the top of my head has. The entire premise of its combat system made Pokemon a potential competitive strategy game from the very beginning. It is purely GF's fault that it's been so badly handled.

>>24640168
It was the whole system actually, EV's, Natures and Abilities.

Intimidite cuts Snorlax's Attack, so you need to invest in it to avoid hitting to weak after intimidate, also, Snorlax in Gen II could run Fire Blast to take out Skarmory and Forretress without caring about lowering its defenses neither its attack.

Also, Natures to "compensate" the lack of Evs, in the early stages Snorlax run more Quiet since they thought that with the nature Boost, Fire Blast will do its thing anyway, they switched to Brave noticing that the boost was proportional at the stat and not arbitrary, they didn't care anymore since uninvested Fire Blast were shit and they need to outspeed the Snorlax that still run Brave.

Also, Gen III made Tyranitar relevant, a lot, with Sand Stream, sure, he was good In Gen II but Gen III, Focus Punch and another things made him deadly. Also Heracross.

Heracross was the fastest Guts User, being able to smash through almost every defensive Mon with impunity back then- You are scared to burn it or paralyze it or whatever fearing Guts Boosted Facade/Megahorn and then you ended swept by the reversal variant.

You tried to stop the reversal variant and it was Choice Banded and tore your defensive mon by just pulling Megahorn.
Heracross was banned in the Japan tournament back in Gen III.
Heracross... Not Salamence, not Tyranitar, not Latios neither Latias. The beetle.