So pokemon games are deliberately imbalanced, this is fact. Some pokemon are made to be stronger simply because from a narrative standpoint it's empowering to catch "the only one" in the region. Often, the availability of a pokemon directly translates to their usefulness.
Everything about this system works in single player or local multiplayer, because it is a direct link between the effort put in to the impact given out.
the following things are what ruin this system
>players that buy two systems and two versions and trade to themselves
>online multiplayer
Red and Blue were made for and work in a playground setting where neither player cheats the system and their skill at the game is what makes the matches.
Buying two systems and trading to yourself makes it far easier to get trade evolutions like gengar and alakazam, which were some of the strongest things in gen 1. Normally, to obtain these for yourself you either need a really good friend who's willing to give you one/trade it back, or a huge sucker to trade away their haunter/kadabra. Pokemon required social links to get to the power level expected in a modern tournament setting.
Online multiplayer only made this worse because it made anti-social trade even easier, since you didn't even need to know the other person. More importantly though, the increased scale of the metagame ultimately highlighted the imbalance of the game without any visible reason.
With both of those in place and simply how easy it is in the modern day to hack in normally very difficult to obtain pokemon, there's simply a number of important mechanics that simply lack a purpose in the mainstream metagame
>levels 2-99
>anything that's below UU tier
>every middle evolution in existence
the saving grace of the meta is smogon's tier listings and pokemon showdown, because otherwise the metagame would consist of bringing your hacked shiny arceus down to jubilife and fighting all of the others.
That said, how would you bring back the effort = reward balance?
fuck comp
>>24918082
but multiplayer is the only reason pokemon is worthwhile, there's no other JRPG with this much of a fleshed out multiplayer
>>24918037
>Some pokemon are made to be stronger simply because from a narrative standpoint it's empowering to catch "the only one" in the region. Often, the availability of a pokemon directly translates to their usefulness.
Yeah, all Pokémon should have the same base stats and movepools
Dumbass
>>24918143
Not what I'm implying at all
I thought this was a "STILL liking _____" thread when i saw the pic
>>24918155
It comes across that way. You stated a potential problem, care to suggest a solution?
>>24918208
the problem is that the disproportionate quality of pokemon is no longer truly justified in today's metagame, and I believe this stems from an archaic design philosophy that the effort needed to obtain something should equal the usefulness of said thing
ultimately, I don't think there's a way to keep this design idea and have it work simply due to people owning multiple copies, people hacking, or the implementation of online in general. So my solution would be to instead go in an entirely different direction and somehow implement buffs to those easier to obtain pokemon that have fallen into lower tiers. perhaps Stadium 3 will make the rental pokemon more balanced or something.
>>24918037
>every muddle evolution
Eviolite helps a lot and proves it's possible to bring some shitmons back to the "competitive scene"; megas arguably did the same thing.
Also, smogon is both not the first or the only one to impose some "arbitrary" rules to the game to make more things viable, we all had some rules AD to what was fair and what was not as kids, don't bring mewtwo, don't bring anything over lvl 50, no confusion/sleep/wathever.
What smogon did was set these gentlemen agreements on stone so that you could play with anyone online without having to bargain as to what's fair or not before every game.
>>24918038
It'd take a complete and utter restructuring of how the game works. Probably down to the basest levels of the combat system.
First thing to do would be to restructure how stats are weighed. Best way to do this would be to make it out of increments of some value, such as 1000, to eliminate the current power creep. Types can also harbor statistical advantages (electric gains extra speed, water increased Def, fire increased Spatk, etc. Etc.), or disadvantages as well, if balance demands it.
Second would be to compartmentalize evolutions on a competitive scale- like how Le Mans has multiple classes for their cars. Hold tournaments for each. You could also hold tournaments in game that require a certain stage of Pokemon, to increase their viability in game.
Final would be to rebuild movesets for most pokemon, and give Pokemon who just cant find a place signature moves (optimally ones that align with their Pokedex entries).
Of course this is really a brief overview of what could be done, but then, none of it will happen. Game Freak is lazy as fuck. Pokemon will always be broken.
>>24918082
Why Fuck c0mp?
He's the only good player in /cpg/
If you think that every pokemon needs to be competitively viable you probably have some kind of brain damage.
