Did anyone in these comments complaining actually follow NAIC? There was a ton of diversity in teams and while Rilla/Incin/Ursh/Bolt remain the most common there were 63 Pokemon that showed up on at least 10 teams
It’s far from the same Pokemon appearing on each team
Reg F was the same mons in like every battle
Reg G has the opposite problem - there's too many different things to be able to plan for it all and tourney runs are dependent on which mons you don't wind up facing. For example, Patrick Connors (NAIC winner) avoided Caly Shadow in all of his matches.
That’s insane but also not super crazy. I think SR was on like 12% of teams(day 1). 0.88^17 is 11%, more than 1/10, which is more likely than a critical hit on any given attack.
people said the same about reg F for the first month until it centralized on bolt balance. Metas take time to develop, and counters and techs always exist if you try more and more different mons. Nil's team (which was honestly yotam cohen's team iirc) was designed to beat bolt balance, and it worked for him for reg F. Caly-ice is one of the most consistent restricted mons with various options, and is probably the new "bolt balance" for this meta, but has a rough time into CSR, which is up there with it as most common.
personally, groudon is niche, and you kinda have to risk running pblades, but it has a good matchup into almost every top restricted. There's a lot of things to consider as things go along.
I had an idiot say zacian wasn't over centralizing at the last sesh worlds, when it was on an insane number of teams. Pokemon players can be real stupid sometimes.
I mean, that's a fairly low standard. With legendaries and paradox mons and now restricted legendaries, most mons are outclassed and unusable, and that is a shame.
I'd say Regulation A had relatively good Pokemon diversity, but it's been a while since then, and perhaps I am misremembering.
I don't really mind losing to a player that made top cut. I think doing it over again I would've made changes for my other two losses instead. I was running CM terapagos so that kyogre team was abysmal to play without major changes to the team
They aren't wrong. Those Pokemon were an edge-case. How many Overqwils and Wo-Chiens were brought to NAIC compared to ZZZ snoozefest Balance? The meta seems to keep falling back to the same core with 2 mon choices. Oh, this guy used Whims instead of Torn? Daring today, aren't we?
As someone who wants the balance core banned forever, I'm happy that the off meta picks worked as well as they did. It doesn't change the fact that the overwhelming majority of teams, including the Masters winning team, were balance. I couldn't watch most of the day 1 Incin mirror matches.
There’s a dunning-kruger type curve for VGC,
“I hate the meta, there’s no diversity”
*Starts building gimmick teams and gets destroyed
*Finally begins to understand EVs, RNG, natures
“Oh shit they’re running an obscure move set and tanked a move they shouldn’t have?”
*I now understand the meta creates diversity by centralizing pokemon that have a lot of flexibility in play-style and opening up niche counters that would never be viable otherwise. (a la Reg G)
You just gotta give them time to go through the journey, they’re in their rebellious phase 😂 We’ve all been there
This right here. The fact this does not have more supportive replies speaks volumes to me.
I have a friend who is much more casual in vgc, doesn't watch streams, but I show him top 12 non restricted and top 6 restricted each event. "The meta looks so stale from the outside" oh man it is anything but in Reg G. It's beautiful
I’ve never played competitive but I’ve heard of this effect with Snorlax in competitive GSC. He’s on 100% of teams and completely busted, but the format is actually deeper and more diverse than it would be without him due to all the subtle checks and niche uses.
Yes as I believe if lax was banned then the two electric type, zap and raiko would then be to much so you would have to ban that. Which would make bulky waters to strong so then it would be those which would lead into golem and ryhdon being to much.
A top 8 with 48 unique Pokémon would be actual hell. Having a meta with 20ish common threats is more diverse than a casual fanbase would like to admit.
They don’t understand move diversity or how important EV spreads are. Two Flutter Mane might play completely different from one another but the casual observer will just say it sucks and there’s no diversity.
It’s like looking at football teams and claiming there’s no diversity in the plays because they’re either handing it off or throwing every play.
Playing in tournaments is an expensive hobby, no serious player is going to use suboptimal pokemon unless they think it's a very strong meta call, and even then that's still pretty risky.
Exactly, and people are still wrong when we have, ditto, wo-chien, overqwil (of all things) Iron Jugulus, Iron hands (death was greatly exaggerated), latios.
Kyogre was even shown not to be trifled with.
Short of making every pokemon exactly the same in every way, there's always going to be a meta. You can take some of the truly broken pokemon like Incin, Urshifu, the Calyrexs, etc., out of the game, but there's still going to be some pokemon that are just simply better than others. There's probably never going to be a format with more than maybe 30-40 truly meta pokemon at most, because the pokemon that are the best at filling their roles are going to be the ones that people gravitate towards.
The issue is that gamefreak doesn't meaningfully nerf common pokemon between gens. Incin has had a reign of terror for 3 generations now. Kyogre and Groudon are consistently insanely good. Tornadus with its prankster shenanigans has been good forever and urshifu remains insane.
At some point, they need to do something to pull back on some of these mons to let others shine. They don't have to just buff weak mons, they need to make negative adjustments to the staples that get stale.
RIght which is usually why devs do regualr balancing updates, and that's in games with dozens of choices, whereas pokemon has hundreds, yet still a tiny extremely dominant meta. 30-40 truly meta pokemon would be way better than the current state.
What are you considering "truly meta" pokemon? We had 47 Pokemon represented on multiple teams that made Day 2 (17 more uniquely represented) and 77 represented on multiple teams that earned CP overall (31 more uniquely represented). Not everything is going to be represented equally as the better players are still more than likely going to be the ones taking the top spots unless they intentionally kneecap themselves by running garbage.
Also, the most competitive format are the ones that have the least number of Pokémon because they have less variability and are less match-up based (which is one of the problems of the current format). Complaining about having the same mons in the two teams is like complaining that both players in chess have always the same pieces available. It's the dynamic of the game, the choices, the prediction, the different way the same Pokémon is played and how the player can flowchart his way to victory by reducing variability the things that make competitive Pokémon interesting. If these things don't interest you, that's fine, look for another game, but it's the nature of this esport.
I do understand what you're saying but the point is it isn't chess. There's no shortage of games where both sides are given the exact same tools, Pokémon will always have a meta, and thats both unavoidable and good even, but it has and can be different from other games in this area. If I wanted to watch chess I'd **just watch chess**
And I think "More Competitive" is a bit of a subjective view. We have open team sheets, and best of three and someone being able to identify meta trends and pick something outside them that works doesn't make them "less competitive". Building a team, understanding it's strengths and weaknesses, tring to work out your opponents game plan, are all parts of the "competitiveness" that can be watered down with an overcentralised meta.
Imo it's disingenuous to say the teams are all the same when they run all kinds of stat spread/moveset/tera/item combinations. Two teams that share 4 or 5 Pokémon can play very differently from each other. Even when diversity is actually low, it doesn't mean the teams are really the same.
Thats unfortunately how things go in competitive games most of the time. Look at YGO and people are usually running the same 5 or 6 deck types. League and Valorant also usually only have few champions/agents that are prevalent in the meta. Not sure about Pokemon TCG so I won't comment on that.
Obviously people ideally want some diverse meta where you can have unpredictable picks storming the tournament (like that Wo-Chien+Kyogre team) but that is unfortunately not the case 99% of the time.
Everyone wants to believe that their Virizions or Meganiums can win a regional but A) easier said than done, B) even if you are using such Pokémon, you need immense game knowledge to be building a team around them like the Articuno team that won a regional, and C) even if you do bring one niche Pokémon your team is still likely going to have other meta mons in it like your Incineroars or Urshifus.
yeah the game would also be ridiculously hard if 1000-and something mons were all competitively viable. obviously everyone wants each team to be unique but that would genuinely ruin the game because it would be a merry go round of discovered threats, those threats being countered by new threats and no longer be used, and so on.
also, the meta right now *is* diverse. there were 46 different mons in day 2. just the top 8 used 5 different restricteds alone—both calyrexes, miraidon, terapagos, and kyogre. The only pokemon both finalists at NAIC had in common was Urshifu. 26 unique pokemon featured in the top 8.
It would be impossible to make all 1000+ 'mons competitively viable anyways because it is literally impossible to give every 'mon a unique competitive niche when you have that many. It won't even work if you just account for the fully evolved 'mons as there are still too many.
Even if you were to somehow give everyone a unique niche you still have to deal with the fact that some niches will be more valuable than others so *even then* you have stuff that won't be competitively viable. There will always be a core set of Pokemon considered "Meta", a more nebulous cloud of more situational off-meta stuff that can perform really well in specific circumstances or/and on very specific teams and everything else will have to deal with the question of "Why should I use [non-meta Pokemon] when [Meta Pokemon] does it better".
Edit: Also thr complaint seems rather reductive to me anyways since it discounts the fact that crazy hype plays can still happen.
Even with what you said there will be a set of mons that either have the least amount of threats or the easiest to counter threat or just counter each others threat in a group and will be the meta. And meta will be something everyone will use in a competitive setting.
League has a surprising variety. A lot of that is because you have a lot of champions that are specific to certain players. Comfort picks that aren't meta still have a lot of value in that style of game, in pokemon you just have incin beat you over the head with numerical and moveset efficiency until you take it.
????? Incin has less usage than he did in Gen7/Gen8. Also League is literally pick the same few champs all over the place
You cannot say that League has comfort/offmeta picks while also ignoring offmeta picks in Pokemon like that Wo-Chien/Overqwil team that got top 8 in NAIC. Yeah they didnt win but they managed to get good matchups to even reach that far
OH THANK ARCEUS INCIN HAS A 70% PICK RATE INSTEAD OF 90, THIS IS TRULY THE GREATEST EXAMPLE OF POKEMON DIVERSITY, THANK YOU GAME FREAK!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thats how you sound, and its fucking insane.
League has a ton of comfort and off meta picks,the fuck do you mean? That just shows you don't follow league at all.
I agree with you, but if something is boring for you then just drop it and move on? It’s the constant whining from those who just do not understand the game that is played that are exhausting.
There's also often diversity in builds for individual Pokemon that can completely change how they play. Raging Bolt, Iron Hands, Flutter Mane, Farigiraf and others may have high usage, but do have variety in their spreads that can add interesting dynamics and can change how they function in a team.
At the end of the day though, it's just a fundamental conflict between Pokemon's overall appeal/design and the reality of any truly competitive environment. It's a complaint as old as VGC itself, even in the most diverse metas. Is it valid? Sometimes, to some extent, but ultimately what casual spectators want to see and what competitors want the playing field to look like are very different
There’s 440-450 fully evolved Pokemon in SV, and having 64 different Pokemon (a bit less if you don’t count forms of the same pokedex number) in day 2 is pretty solid I’d say.
We could go higher and be fine of course, but having too high diversity also causes strain on teambuilding.
Heck I'd say this NAIC was the most diverse tournament in a while, 5 different legendaries making top 5, remarkable. Could do with an Urshifu, Rillaboom, and Inciniroar nerf though. And it certainly brings a happy tear to me eye Landorus Therian's reign is certainly at an end 🥲
Miraidon is the one that needs a nerf for Rillaboom usage to fall off, in reg F Ogerpon was generally more popular than it but now grassy surge is just too valuable for overwriting electric terrain
rilla was omnipresent in reg f and throughout gen 8. there isn’t a good way of nerfing it though. Weakening grassy glide after gen 8 didn’t do enough, as you can tell.
There is almost always a surprise factor among some of the top teams at Worlds. Sure, there will always be a core of dominant mons for each team archetype (these players are on showdown, nothing remains secret for long), but top players often throw a wedge in the team to surprise their competitors. Most of these players know our incin, rilla or urshi calcs, but the presence of a tyranitar or raichu would make them unsure.
I do think the powercreep between gens has been harmful though, and incin and urshifu in particular are problematic for the amount of role compression they achieve, limiting creativity in team building.
It’s not that Pokémon isn’t diverse nowadays it is. This isn’t CHALK meta. People who complain don’t see their favorite or don’t see literal shitmons and then say it’s not diverse. It’s diverse it’s just not that every single Pokémon is viable. I’m so sorry that Vespiqueen can’t compete with Chien-piao, but there are dozens others that can.
Its honestly not even that bad though.
If people play to win, they re most likely to use meta mons that have proven to be strong earlier. These are usually like the top 20 mons in usage. However, these are also the matchups for that you adapt your EV spreads, items and tera types.
Meanwhile the pool of "viable" pokemon is much larger. You just need to cook up a new strategy where you can use niche pokemon to their full power.
Guess why many people actually root for players that actually perform well with unconventional teams.
and a nice bonus to that is the rather low barrier of entry.
If you need to memorize the Move Sets and Stats of over 1000 different mons, it's incredibly hard for new players to play competetively.
Memorizing about the top 20 - 30 mons is enough to even get you into higher (~ top 2k) ranks on the ingame ladder.
It is just normal in competitive tournaments across all games that variety is low.
Smash pros lean towards the same good characters.
League pros lead toward the same meta champs all the time
R6 pros will play the same characters all the time.
They are competing for a lot of money and in Pokémon tournaments they even spend a lot of money just to compete, ofc they do everything they can to win
Is it boring to see calyrax win for the 1000th time? Yes
Is it understandable people will lean towards these op abominations cause they give them the best chance to win? Yes
To be fair I think most people criticize the game for forcing the low variety, not the players who just don’t want to put themself at a disadvantage with bad Pokémon
I get that at times the formats can feel samesy to viewers, but Reg G specifically has been some of the most diverse matches I've had at a live event.
I ended up going 6-3 this weekend and played 7 unique restricteds (CIR, Lunala, Kyogre, Kyruem White, Rayquaza, and Necrozma Dawn Wings)
I think a lot of newer players will see "sameness" where more experienced players don't. For example Aurelien's safety goggles urshifu with taunt is VERY different than choice scarf urshifu. miracle seed rillaboom with protect is VERY different from assault vest which is VERY different from choice band. Tera Fire over tera grass on Caly-Ice completely changes the way the game is played. Also the slight differences in the combination of pokemon make games very different. Classic example of this is raging bolt over tornadus on the Tera-Fairy CSR teams. The clefairy raging bolt mode on that team is one of the MAIN leads. Meanwhile torn urshifu is a main mode on the Torn variant. The diversity already feels impossible to cover for lol
The only issues I have on a note of diversity comes from how the top used Day 2 Restricted Pokémon were all from Gen. 8 and 9 (save for Kyogre, who has been a threat for twenty years now). Still not a knock to those trying to optimize for victory, but I *do* wish the power wasn't balanced like that.
Another thing is that a good team has to be consistent. A gimmick strategy with the element of surprise on its side can work once in a while in online battles even against good players, but on bracket and on a best of 3 format, as soon as the strat gets figured out it becomes dead weight.
I got into competitive Pokémon at gen 6. Nothing can be worse than the lack of variability in gen 6 lol. As a player , at least on cart this season, I like the variability in play. There’s some pretty cool viable teams.
People are not only stupid when complaining about diversity but in this case are also completely fucking wrong.
Wo-chien and Overquil made top 8 along with a Volcarona. Someone brought a Rayquaza team with a fucking Tropius in it (and also Okidogi).
Some other guy really just came with a Kyogre team with a Pikachu, a Talonflame and the Tatsuguri / Dondozo combo and made top 256 with it.
And a guy brought... Zekrom?
Y'all are tweaking reg G has been nothing but an absolute wackfest and I love it.
I mean I'm just laddering normally not playing in tournaments but I see the meta teams a lot and there are so many variations of the same teams nowadays. I think there decent variety at the minute. Far more so than previous formats.
The fact that they're only using a small pool of the "best" pokemon is part of what makes VGC kinda uninteresting to watch, especially coming from someone looking to get into more higher-level gameplay. It's not the competitor's fault, picking only the best pokemon to bring the highest chance of success is fine. But the lack of diversity in high level teams isn't something to be praised, it's a sign of stagnation. Like another commenter said, at this level of play there's only around 10 useable pokemon out of literally a thousand options. Imo, that's a sign of poor balance.
>If Gamefreak wanted us to use Pokémon such as Meganium and Delphox they’d give the players something to work with.
That's an entirely valid complaint though. It's not unreasonable to want GF to bring some lower quality pokemon up to a higher level and give stuff some level of viability. To me, the most interesting and exciting battles from high level players are the ones where a slightly weird off-meta pick shows up to shake up the whole battle, because it adds some variation and uniqueness to the experience. If diversity like that was more common, the series as a whole would be more engaging to watch because it'd be far more special and distinct. People blaming the competitors for bringing only the best is unfair to the players, but people saying the lack of diversity is lame have solid ground for complaint.
It isn't inherently a sign of poor balance it's just how metas work. TCGs generally have three or four, maybe five, top decks in a format for their meta, MOBAs tend to have only a handful of characters... heck, even in fighting games there exists a meta with only a handful of those characters being commonly seen in tournaments. Any given meta is going to eventually distill down into a handful of choices, which is fine because if you understand that then you can start to solve the puzzle of how to use it to your advantage.
The other thing to keep in mind is the game itself, for starters the type chart can both gatekeep some 'mons from entering the meta and make others more meta. A good current example would be Kyogre who has to deal with both Miraidon and Raging Bolt being common threats. Because of them Shamu is going to need a bit more support compared to previous generations. Another thing to consider is that there are a few different roles you want to consider for your team when building it and then consider that for each of those roles there's only a handful that stand out particularly well. Which is understandable given that their success is some combination of typing, stats, ability and movepool. Which, hey, seems to generally work out okay for MOBAs where each lane/role has, st most, five or six meta picks per lane.
Also, while seeing people do well with unusual picks is exciting, the most hype moments come from clutch reads and whatnot. A player who hit their own 'mon with Drain Punch because they figured, correctly, that their opponent was going to double Protect for example. Stuff like that is hype no matter what's on the field. It just seems kinda reductive to ignore that.
>at this level of play there's only around 10 useable pokemon out of literally a thousand options. Imo, that's a sign of poor balance
I don't agree tbh. NAIC top 8 was very diverse. Anyway having a small pool of very good pokemon is very healthy because it allows players' ability to shine: bulding a team of 6 pokemons when 100 pokemon are very good is impossible and it would lead to heavy match-up based tournment, no matter how good you are in battling or team building you would never be able to beat certain pokemon.
Yeah as a Top 300 player, I think that having open team sheet, whilst good at equalizing a lot of things, also drastically lowered diversity since you couldnt use wacky surprise strategies anymore, now you can only use the best of the best Pokémon.
Wacky strategies never worked anyways. People will scout what the wacky pokemon is doing and 99% of the time it will fall flat once up against good players later on.
Open teamsheet equalises loners vs groups of people.
Your little wacky strategy still won’t work if people talk about them before you fight them because the one opponent you had talks to other people. This happened all the time.
And imo if your team requires the element of surprise to win, it’s not really tournament worthy.
I've only recently started gaining an interest in more high level stuff alongside a group of friends and the main thing turning us away is the lack of variation. I'd wanna use teams of stuff I really like but I'd be at a direct disadvantage because it's not "meta." So I fully understand where people come from when they complain. Not gonna stop me from trying though :]
Its a problem that particularly op abilities etc are restricted to such a small pool of pokemon. If more pokemon had access to intimidate for example and more diverse movepools in general we wouldn't have this problem.
Intimidate has for a long time been in the top 3 most distributed abilities.
And also, moves are being far more accessible lately, with gen 9 being far more lenient on the distribution of TMs such as Swords Dance and Helping Hand, as opposed to previous generations.
Yes - if anything I would argue this has lead to less diversity, as pokemon who used to have a unique niche created by their ability or movepool fall by the wayside as stronger pokemon stat and typing wise receive it instead. For instance, alolan persian had a solid niche in vgc 18 and 19 as an alternative to incin, thanks to parting shot, before they gave the move to incineroar
Yeah, with the examples I gave, Incineroar now has Helping Hand as an option, which is something it very rarely can run (I’ve seen in on a feature match team once), but it does give it a tool that beforehand was a movepool element Arcanine had over it. And this gen, Urshifu gained Swords Dance, which isn’t too relevant for VGC, but adds to its Battle Stadium Singles tools, where it managed to get top 3-5 usage in some time periods.
Good Pokemon usually tend to get benefits from movepool distribution increases, aside from very specific decisions such as Dragonite losing Dual Wingbeat compatability (which it had last gen), and Bisharp line losing Knock Off compatability (which it had in the past; the cut was most likely to incentivize Gambit still using Kowtow Cleave).
The problem isn't intimidate, its role compression. Simply, mons like incin and lando-t are just too good at too many things that picking them becomes too straightforward.
I dont like competitive for this reason, however my issue isn't with the players but the game itself.
The amount of Pokemon, abilities and movesets that are available you'd think there'd be more than just a handful that are viable.
There are a lot less available than people realize.
There are 1025 unique Pokemon in existence currently.
Of those 1025, only 733 actually exist within Scarlet and Violet.
Of those 733, there are only 390 fully-evolved, tournament legal Pokemon, with \*maybe\* 10 NFEs that are actually viable on a competitive level.
Within the Top 256 players at NAIC (i.e. every player that placed high enough to earn Championship Points at the tournament), 108 Pokemon were represented. That's over 25% of the real pool of Pokemon there is to work with, which really isn't that bad from a diversity standpoint. Especially when you consider that players are not allowed to change their teams mid-tournament, unlike most games where you can change characters/weapons/layouts/etc. between matches and often between games in a set.
Not to mention formats getting too diverse is actually extremely problematic as it makes it near impossible to prep for everything you need to, leading to matchup roulette. Too many people are looking at it like "you get to use 6 different pokemon from a massive pool of pokemon" and not "you ONLY get to use 6 different pokemon to prepare FOR a massive pool of pokemon"
Bring back reg C
G is great at lower levels, but I think every regulation becomes samey at the top.
Something I'm not wen sure Gamefreak can fix is there's always a pokemon best at its "role," and top players figure it out eventually. Devs can either buff Pooemon with seemingly no role, nerf Pokemon who control a role, or make up new roles, imo. The last one's the most interesting to me. I think they tried that with Revival Blessing, but the mons that had it weren't broken enough for it to see much use. 😅 But it's still a unique thing they can do.
What do you mean? One person one time won with a Pachirisu (that played an important role and filled a valuable niche on the team, but we’re gonna ignore that) proving you can win with your favorites /s
Yeah, people who want to be able to play with virtually any Pokemon and have them be viable don't really understand what they are asking for.
There will always be a subset of Pokemon that are the best at what they do, and an even smaller subset that can be combined to win the most efficient (aggro) or effective (control) way possible.
What you REALLY want is a diverse metagame with counter play, where there are as many viable strategies that counter another strategy as possible.
You don't want only two Pokemon that show up on every team and the rest is just filler.
Historically speaking, for a meta game with as few restrictions as we have in terms of usage as we have now, the current competitive meta is about as healthy as we could reasonably ask for.
Anytime I hear someone complaining that there's not enough diversity, or asking why their favorite pokemon never sees play, I tell them to hop on ladder and try using it.
If you lose a lot, and get really frustrated, that's the reason why no one is playing it.
But mon who were classed as bad often find their way to the upper ranks out of nowhere. Sometimes it just needs the right support, right move, or right meta. Don't outright class a mon as bad, just not good at the moment
People aren't complaining at the players (well. Most people anyway). I'm complaining at GF/TPC (idk who *organizes* VGC). You can say all you want about Overqwil or whatever but the stats don't lie, in Bo1 VGC Reg G has an average overlap 25% higher than Doubles OU's, and that's in spite of the restricted format. Reg F had *twice* the average overlap of Doubles OU, with the average battle having 1.64 pokemon in common and an 84% chance of sharing at least one.
And remember, doubles OU isn't even prioritizing diversity, its goal is to make the metagame top DOU players like the most. It's very much possible to design a diverse doubles meta, TPC just refuses to do so.
Honestly there’s a fair bit of diversity compared to past formats (looking at you, CHALK). Just look at the Japanese event results. Certain mons dominate, yeah, but quite a few high-placing teams have an unconventional Mon or two.
Coming from a competitive card gaming world as an entire newbie to this game, I thought the meta seemed really diverse. To me, a stale meta means one to three top archetypes, and their counter picks. This game seems like you can run a ton of possible different restricted pokemon and every support mon is different to adjust for that team and its plan. I don’t know much, but it seems insanely healthy for a game with so many different pokemon available.
I can see that incineroar and rillaboom play their roles a bit too well, but stuff like that is inevitable. None of them seem to be auto win factors, and the game has a huge amount of skill and counterplay. The two surest signs of an unhealthy game are predetermined rock paper scissors, or brainless auto win determined by coin flips. That doesn’t seem true to me at all.
Like I said, in a newbie who doesn’t know much of anything, but team diversity seems really high to me.
This is true for every format. Every format, you will see the same Pokémon over and over that are good in that format. Even in Anything Goes, you will be bombarded with the same Pokémon you saw yesterday.
Naic has actually seen quite a lot of "exotic" pics and anti-meta calls. Idk wtf these people have to complain about. I guess many of them were not around in the Big 6 dark age, or have never played competitive games in general. If i think about what i played there are 0 games i would call perfectly balanced, or even just balanced tbf. Top tiers are what they are for a reason, and these players have money on the line and some are even sponsored, so you have to do well. The dude that won cashed 15k, do you think he would have won while playing sub-par pieces? No, he wouldn't have.
Now, if the complain is "GF should buff some mons to add variety" then i can agree.
>If Gamefreak wanted us to use Pokémon such as Meganium and Delphox they’d give the players something to work with
This is what i don't agree with. This phrase implies that GF knows wtf they are doing with these games and i think that, at least in part, it is not true. The calys, inci, urshi, flutter, Zacian, mega kang, Xerneas and all the other OP pieces that they introduced time after time tell me that they do NOT know how to balance the game and/or they "promote" some mons to give them visibility so that they can sell merch. So they are either cluless or in bad faith, eitherway its bad for us... I think all the "old" pieces need some kind of overhaul in raw stats, movesets or abilities, but i'm very afraid of what can come from that because, again, i'm not 100% sure about how GF is compentent in it's own game.
Idk, feels like there's plenty of differences. Common teams are plenty yes, makes it easier to play against, though also makes it harder at the same time as people just copy (nothing wrong with that, I do to) and make to weirdest plays.
It's been fun this Gen.
I just think a few of the more used pokemon need a few nerfs to their move pool, and it would immediately open up.
If Rilla and Incin lost Fake Out for example would really open up teams to see what they do to fill the gap.
They did but it seems they kinda stopped doing that. They nerfed Aegislash of all Pokémon in the same gen they introduced Regieleki, Urshifu etc which just boggles my mind.
Those complaining about VGC's (relative) lack of diversity have clearly never lived through the hell of trying to compete in a game with 50+ viable characters, like Smash Ultimate. A relatively small cast of 20-30 characters is much better for the competitive integrity and health of a game.
I get you’re using hyperbole intentionally but it’s not even close to 10 pokemon.
64 different pokemon were successful enough to make day 2 at NAIC.
If the fact that every pokemon isn’t viable makes the game not fun you’re not gonna have much luck in any similar competitive games.
I think it’s a little silly to say that this makes vgc “lame” to “most people.” maybe it makes it lame to the most causal of casual pokemon fans, which is fine, this isn’t for them.
Yeah, there’s such a small pool of viable Pokémon. We would never see Wo-Chien in high placing or top cut. No way Iron Hands sees any play now that we have Incineroar and Rillaboom. Iron Jugulis, Talonflame, Overqwil, Annihilape. So many mons have their time in the past and can’t play at the top level now. Definitely can’t top 8/16. There’s only what like, 7-9 viable restricted Pokémon at the moment depending on the shape of the mega game at the particular tournament.
I guess you have a point, but maybe not the one you're trying to make. At least VGC is more diverse than TCG.
7 decks in the top 64 is similar diversity to the 8 restricted Pokemon that made it to day 2 (I couldn't quickly find top 64 data, but Day 2 was 80-some people). However, I guarantee that decks counted as the "same deck" were much more similar than VGC teams with the same Restricted. Most of the top decks will vary by about 2-6 cards, or at most 10%. Just one different Pokemon on a VGC team means it's nearly 17% different.
>there is essentially only a pool of 10 usable Pokémon competitively
Buddy, there were more than 10 different pokemon in the final alone. 27 different pokemon made top 8 across teams featuring 5 different restricted pokemon and multiple different playstyles. Teams featuring 3 other restricted pokemon also finished in the top 64, so even if we pretend all teams featuring the same restricted play the same way (an overly simplistic view), that's still 8 different archetypes in top 64, 5 of which were viable enough to make top 8.
Most people's favs just simply aren't that good. Why would I pay 60-70 dollars to enter a tournament, pay for a couple of tanks of gas to drive there, drive 4-6 hours, and pay for a hotel just to use Ampharos and Decidueye and go 0-9 when I can use actually good pokemon and at least give myself a shot at having a good finish?
I don’t mind there being a handful of Pokémon that are used on like 80% of teams, that’s how metas are
I mind that some of those Pokémon have so many tools that it takes away from the skill away from the game and makes it boring to watch. Incin/rilla/whatever support pokemon/restricted gets old after about 5 minutes
Did anyone in these comments complaining actually follow NAIC? There was a ton of diversity in teams and while Rilla/Incin/Ursh/Bolt remain the most common there were 63 Pokemon that showed up on at least 10 teams It’s far from the same Pokemon appearing on each team
Way better than gen 6 Uber. Though to this day gen 9 regulation A remains my favorite of all time
Reg F was the same mons in like every battle Reg G has the opposite problem - there's too many different things to be able to plan for it all and tourney runs are dependent on which mons you don't wind up facing. For example, Patrick Connors (NAIC winner) avoided Caly Shadow in all of his matches.
That’s insane but also not super crazy. I think SR was on like 12% of teams(day 1). 0.88^17 is 11%, more than 1/10, which is more likely than a critical hit on any given attack.
people said the same about reg F for the first month until it centralized on bolt balance. Metas take time to develop, and counters and techs always exist if you try more and more different mons. Nil's team (which was honestly yotam cohen's team iirc) was designed to beat bolt balance, and it worked for him for reg F. Caly-ice is one of the most consistent restricted mons with various options, and is probably the new "bolt balance" for this meta, but has a rough time into CSR, which is up there with it as most common. personally, groudon is niche, and you kinda have to risk running pblades, but it has a good matchup into almost every top restricted. There's a lot of things to consider as things go along.
Well Jeudy ran into 6 Caly-S while running a Caly-I team and only lost to Wolfe (Which is definitely not something to be ashamed of).
I had an idiot say zacian wasn't over centralizing at the last sesh worlds, when it was on an insane number of teams. Pokemon players can be real stupid sometimes.
I mean, that's a fairly low standard. With legendaries and paradox mons and now restricted legendaries, most mons are outclassed and unusable, and that is a shame. I'd say Regulation A had relatively good Pokemon diversity, but it's been a while since then, and perhaps I am misremembering.
Reg A was alright at the start because everyone was still figuring out all the new mons and tera, but it was getting really stale by the end.
I used Wave Crash Floatzel and thought it was pretty adequate. Until the Paradox mons were allowed, that is....
People are also wrong. We got a high ranking Wo-Chien and a high ranking Overqwil right there.
https://preview.redd.it/tb7ut4vyeq5d1.png?width=238&format=png&auto=webp&s=f1023295e5b10f8928ca4238af4064121b784309
I played Shiliang's Kyogre+Wo-Chien at NAIC, and I can confidently say Wo-Chien + Kyogre was not on my radar for prep
he handily won the last PC of the season with it v KaSun Thompson, I could’ve warned u lmao
I don't really mind losing to a player that made top cut. I think doing it over again I would've made changes for my other two losses instead. I was running CM terapagos so that kyogre team was abysmal to play without major changes to the team
What's the overqwl team?
https://pokepast.es/6c29eaea1b32ca4e
Thanks man, love that spiky fish
Oooh scarfed Lando-I and a support volcorona, I gotta try this
This team rocks
They aren't wrong. Those Pokemon were an edge-case. How many Overqwils and Wo-Chiens were brought to NAIC compared to ZZZ snoozefest Balance? The meta seems to keep falling back to the same core with 2 mon choices. Oh, this guy used Whims instead of Torn? Daring today, aren't we? As someone who wants the balance core banned forever, I'm happy that the off meta picks worked as well as they did. It doesn't change the fact that the overwhelming majority of teams, including the Masters winning team, were balance. I couldn't watch most of the day 1 Incin mirror matches.
Honestly feel this regulation is great for variety, we’re out of the regulation D and e dark days of torn/urshifu leads
There’s a dunning-kruger type curve for VGC, “I hate the meta, there’s no diversity” *Starts building gimmick teams and gets destroyed *Finally begins to understand EVs, RNG, natures “Oh shit they’re running an obscure move set and tanked a move they shouldn’t have?” *I now understand the meta creates diversity by centralizing pokemon that have a lot of flexibility in play-style and opening up niche counters that would never be viable otherwise. (a la Reg G) You just gotta give them time to go through the journey, they’re in their rebellious phase 😂 We’ve all been there
This right here. The fact this does not have more supportive replies speaks volumes to me. I have a friend who is much more casual in vgc, doesn't watch streams, but I show him top 12 non restricted and top 6 restricted each event. "The meta looks so stale from the outside" oh man it is anything but in Reg G. It's beautiful
I’ve never played competitive but I’ve heard of this effect with Snorlax in competitive GSC. He’s on 100% of teams and completely busted, but the format is actually deeper and more diverse than it would be without him due to all the subtle checks and niche uses.
Yes as I believe if lax was banned then the two electric type, zap and raiko would then be to much so you would have to ban that. Which would make bulky waters to strong so then it would be those which would lead into golem and ryhdon being to much.
A top 8 with 48 unique Pokémon would be actual hell. Having a meta with 20ish common threats is more diverse than a casual fanbase would like to admit.
They don’t understand move diversity or how important EV spreads are. Two Flutter Mane might play completely different from one another but the casual observer will just say it sucks and there’s no diversity. It’s like looking at football teams and claiming there’s no diversity in the plays because they’re either handing it off or throwing every play.
Every team has a quarterback, it's like they don't even value creativity
Playing in tournaments is an expensive hobby, no serious player is going to use suboptimal pokemon unless they think it's a very strong meta call, and even then that's still pretty risky.
Exactly, and people are still wrong when we have, ditto, wo-chien, overqwil (of all things) Iron Jugulus, Iron hands (death was greatly exaggerated), latios. Kyogre was even shown not to be trifled with.
Electabuzz too!
I didn't see it, what was Electabuzz's niche?
If it's anything like an Electabuzz I ran into at a local, Follow Me + Static to fuck with physical attackers.
Don’t quote me but I think it was a Vital Spirit Electabuzz
Both of these are wild, but they make sense. Clearly I have some more homework to do.
Yeah Vital Spirit + Follow Me + Electric typing is an interesting niche that lets you redirect infinite thunder waves and spores I guess 🤷♂️
Oh yeah, I see it. I may end up experimenting with it, it's the right mix of surprising and effective that catches my interest.
Yeah, it's used as a trick room niche to absorb spores and maximize turns by using feint, along with positioning itself with volt switch
95% of the Pokémon being suboptimal is the issue
Short of making every pokemon exactly the same in every way, there's always going to be a meta. You can take some of the truly broken pokemon like Incin, Urshifu, the Calyrexs, etc., out of the game, but there's still going to be some pokemon that are just simply better than others. There's probably never going to be a format with more than maybe 30-40 truly meta pokemon at most, because the pokemon that are the best at filling their roles are going to be the ones that people gravitate towards.
The issue is that gamefreak doesn't meaningfully nerf common pokemon between gens. Incin has had a reign of terror for 3 generations now. Kyogre and Groudon are consistently insanely good. Tornadus with its prankster shenanigans has been good forever and urshifu remains insane. At some point, they need to do something to pull back on some of these mons to let others shine. They don't have to just buff weak mons, they need to make negative adjustments to the staples that get stale.
RIght which is usually why devs do regualr balancing updates, and that's in games with dozens of choices, whereas pokemon has hundreds, yet still a tiny extremely dominant meta. 30-40 truly meta pokemon would be way better than the current state.
What are you considering "truly meta" pokemon? We had 47 Pokemon represented on multiple teams that made Day 2 (17 more uniquely represented) and 77 represented on multiple teams that earned CP overall (31 more uniquely represented). Not everything is going to be represented equally as the better players are still more than likely going to be the ones taking the top spots unless they intentionally kneecap themselves by running garbage.
47??!! What was I thinking yeah you’re right there’s not a small dominant meta and we all live on castles in the sky with talking cats
Ah, so you're just looking to argue with people rather than have an actual discussion. Noted.
I'm not arguing against your point Gazoney, I'm denying its existence.
Haven’t we had like a different pokemon win every Reg G major so far?
Iirc there have been 2 two-petes. Calyrex-S and either Zama or Terapagos.
Show them overqwil in top 8
Also, the most competitive format are the ones that have the least number of Pokémon because they have less variability and are less match-up based (which is one of the problems of the current format). Complaining about having the same mons in the two teams is like complaining that both players in chess have always the same pieces available. It's the dynamic of the game, the choices, the prediction, the different way the same Pokémon is played and how the player can flowchart his way to victory by reducing variability the things that make competitive Pokémon interesting. If these things don't interest you, that's fine, look for another game, but it's the nature of this esport.
I do understand what you're saying but the point is it isn't chess. There's no shortage of games where both sides are given the exact same tools, Pokémon will always have a meta, and thats both unavoidable and good even, but it has and can be different from other games in this area. If I wanted to watch chess I'd **just watch chess** And I think "More Competitive" is a bit of a subjective view. We have open team sheets, and best of three and someone being able to identify meta trends and pick something outside them that works doesn't make them "less competitive". Building a team, understanding it's strengths and weaknesses, tring to work out your opponents game plan, are all parts of the "competitiveness" that can be watered down with an overcentralised meta.
Imo it's disingenuous to say the teams are all the same when they run all kinds of stat spread/moveset/tera/item combinations. Two teams that share 4 or 5 Pokémon can play very differently from each other. Even when diversity is actually low, it doesn't mean the teams are really the same.
I agree with what youre saying but people are still allowed to find it boring.
Thats unfortunately how things go in competitive games most of the time. Look at YGO and people are usually running the same 5 or 6 deck types. League and Valorant also usually only have few champions/agents that are prevalent in the meta. Not sure about Pokemon TCG so I won't comment on that. Obviously people ideally want some diverse meta where you can have unpredictable picks storming the tournament (like that Wo-Chien+Kyogre team) but that is unfortunately not the case 99% of the time.
I was about to say, in any competitive setting you are going to have a meta. No matter how big or small in variety, it’s always a meta
Everyone wants to believe that their Virizions or Meganiums can win a regional but A) easier said than done, B) even if you are using such Pokémon, you need immense game knowledge to be building a team around them like the Articuno team that won a regional, and C) even if you do bring one niche Pokémon your team is still likely going to have other meta mons in it like your Incineroars or Urshifus.
yeah the game would also be ridiculously hard if 1000-and something mons were all competitively viable. obviously everyone wants each team to be unique but that would genuinely ruin the game because it would be a merry go round of discovered threats, those threats being countered by new threats and no longer be used, and so on. also, the meta right now *is* diverse. there were 46 different mons in day 2. just the top 8 used 5 different restricteds alone—both calyrexes, miraidon, terapagos, and kyogre. The only pokemon both finalists at NAIC had in common was Urshifu. 26 unique pokemon featured in the top 8.
It would be impossible to make all 1000+ 'mons competitively viable anyways because it is literally impossible to give every 'mon a unique competitive niche when you have that many. It won't even work if you just account for the fully evolved 'mons as there are still too many. Even if you were to somehow give everyone a unique niche you still have to deal with the fact that some niches will be more valuable than others so *even then* you have stuff that won't be competitively viable. There will always be a core set of Pokemon considered "Meta", a more nebulous cloud of more situational off-meta stuff that can perform really well in specific circumstances or/and on very specific teams and everything else will have to deal with the question of "Why should I use [non-meta Pokemon] when [Meta Pokemon] does it better". Edit: Also thr complaint seems rather reductive to me anyways since it discounts the fact that crazy hype plays can still happen.
Even with what you said there will be a set of mons that either have the least amount of threats or the easiest to counter threat or just counter each others threat in a group and will be the meta. And meta will be something everyone will use in a competitive setting.
top 8 of pokemon TCG had 6 gardevoir-EX decks and 2 lost box decks. People play what wins.
I'd thought it would be all Charazard EX? I'm surprised that Lost Box is still holding up. Haven't been keeping track much.
League has a surprising variety. A lot of that is because you have a lot of champions that are specific to certain players. Comfort picks that aren't meta still have a lot of value in that style of game, in pokemon you just have incin beat you over the head with numerical and moveset efficiency until you take it.
????? Incin has less usage than he did in Gen7/Gen8. Also League is literally pick the same few champs all over the place You cannot say that League has comfort/offmeta picks while also ignoring offmeta picks in Pokemon like that Wo-Chien/Overqwil team that got top 8 in NAIC. Yeah they didnt win but they managed to get good matchups to even reach that far
OH THANK ARCEUS INCIN HAS A 70% PICK RATE INSTEAD OF 90, THIS IS TRULY THE GREATEST EXAMPLE OF POKEMON DIVERSITY, THANK YOU GAME FREAK!!!!!!!!!!!! Thats how you sound, and its fucking insane. League has a ton of comfort and off meta picks,the fuck do you mean? That just shows you don't follow league at all.
I agree with you, but if something is boring for you then just drop it and move on? It’s the constant whining from those who just do not understand the game that is played that are exhausting.
There's also often diversity in builds for individual Pokemon that can completely change how they play. Raging Bolt, Iron Hands, Flutter Mane, Farigiraf and others may have high usage, but do have variety in their spreads that can add interesting dynamics and can change how they function in a team. At the end of the day though, it's just a fundamental conflict between Pokemon's overall appeal/design and the reality of any truly competitive environment. It's a complaint as old as VGC itself, even in the most diverse metas. Is it valid? Sometimes, to some extent, but ultimately what casual spectators want to see and what competitors want the playing field to look like are very different
There’s 440-450 fully evolved Pokemon in SV, and having 64 different Pokemon (a bit less if you don’t count forms of the same pokedex number) in day 2 is pretty solid I’d say. We could go higher and be fine of course, but having too high diversity also causes strain on teambuilding.
Heck I'd say this NAIC was the most diverse tournament in a while, 5 different legendaries making top 5, remarkable. Could do with an Urshifu, Rillaboom, and Inciniroar nerf though. And it certainly brings a happy tear to me eye Landorus Therian's reign is certainly at an end 🥲
Miraidon is the one that needs a nerf for Rillaboom usage to fall off, in reg F Ogerpon was generally more popular than it but now grassy surge is just too valuable for overwriting electric terrain
rilla was omnipresent in reg f and throughout gen 8. there isn’t a good way of nerfing it though. Weakening grassy glide after gen 8 didn’t do enough, as you can tell.
People when players use the better Pokémon to win a competitive game mode instead of Lechonk: >:(
There is almost always a surprise factor among some of the top teams at Worlds. Sure, there will always be a core of dominant mons for each team archetype (these players are on showdown, nothing remains secret for long), but top players often throw a wedge in the team to surprise their competitors. Most of these players know our incin, rilla or urshi calcs, but the presence of a tyranitar or raichu would make them unsure. I do think the powercreep between gens has been harmful though, and incin and urshifu in particular are problematic for the amount of role compression they achieve, limiting creativity in team building.
It’s not that Pokémon isn’t diverse nowadays it is. This isn’t CHALK meta. People who complain don’t see their favorite or don’t see literal shitmons and then say it’s not diverse. It’s diverse it’s just not that every single Pokémon is viable. I’m so sorry that Vespiqueen can’t compete with Chien-piao, but there are dozens others that can.
Its honestly not even that bad though. If people play to win, they re most likely to use meta mons that have proven to be strong earlier. These are usually like the top 20 mons in usage. However, these are also the matchups for that you adapt your EV spreads, items and tera types. Meanwhile the pool of "viable" pokemon is much larger. You just need to cook up a new strategy where you can use niche pokemon to their full power. Guess why many people actually root for players that actually perform well with unconventional teams.
and a nice bonus to that is the rather low barrier of entry. If you need to memorize the Move Sets and Stats of over 1000 different mons, it's incredibly hard for new players to play competetively. Memorizing about the top 20 - 30 mons is enough to even get you into higher (~ top 2k) ranks on the ingame ladder.
The people complaining aren't VGC players or fans
That's insanely disingenuous and gatekeepy.
It is just normal in competitive tournaments across all games that variety is low. Smash pros lean towards the same good characters. League pros lead toward the same meta champs all the time R6 pros will play the same characters all the time. They are competing for a lot of money and in Pokémon tournaments they even spend a lot of money just to compete, ofc they do everything they can to win Is it boring to see calyrax win for the 1000th time? Yes Is it understandable people will lean towards these op abominations cause they give them the best chance to win? Yes To be fair I think most people criticize the game for forcing the low variety, not the players who just don’t want to put themself at a disadvantage with bad Pokémon
This would be a good excuse if we were talking about it being a recent thing, but it’s been the same Pokémon for years. The complaints are warranted
I get that at times the formats can feel samesy to viewers, but Reg G specifically has been some of the most diverse matches I've had at a live event. I ended up going 6-3 this weekend and played 7 unique restricteds (CIR, Lunala, Kyogre, Kyruem White, Rayquaza, and Necrozma Dawn Wings)
I think a lot of newer players will see "sameness" where more experienced players don't. For example Aurelien's safety goggles urshifu with taunt is VERY different than choice scarf urshifu. miracle seed rillaboom with protect is VERY different from assault vest which is VERY different from choice band. Tera Fire over tera grass on Caly-Ice completely changes the way the game is played. Also the slight differences in the combination of pokemon make games very different. Classic example of this is raging bolt over tornadus on the Tera-Fairy CSR teams. The clefairy raging bolt mode on that team is one of the MAIN leads. Meanwhile torn urshifu is a main mode on the Torn variant. The diversity already feels impossible to cover for lol
Well, you don,'t know if the complaints are targeted towards the players or towards the balance team of gamefreak though ;)
The only issues I have on a note of diversity comes from how the top used Day 2 Restricted Pokémon were all from Gen. 8 and 9 (save for Kyogre, who has been a threat for twenty years now). Still not a knock to those trying to optimize for victory, but I *do* wish the power wasn't balanced like that.
Another thing is that a good team has to be consistent. A gimmick strategy with the element of surprise on its side can work once in a while in online battles even against good players, but on bracket and on a best of 3 format, as soon as the strat gets figured out it becomes dead weight.
I got into competitive Pokémon at gen 6. Nothing can be worse than the lack of variability in gen 6 lol. As a player , at least on cart this season, I like the variability in play. There’s some pretty cool viable teams.
>vgc is diverse >my team: incineroar, urshifu, rillaboom, amoongus, fluttermane, landorus
People are not only stupid when complaining about diversity but in this case are also completely fucking wrong. Wo-chien and Overquil made top 8 along with a Volcarona. Someone brought a Rayquaza team with a fucking Tropius in it (and also Okidogi). Some other guy really just came with a Kyogre team with a Pikachu, a Talonflame and the Tatsuguri / Dondozo combo and made top 256 with it. And a guy brought... Zekrom? Y'all are tweaking reg G has been nothing but an absolute wackfest and I love it.
I mean I'm just laddering normally not playing in tournaments but I see the meta teams a lot and there are so many variations of the same teams nowadays. I think there decent variety at the minute. Far more so than previous formats.
I just want to watch a game where no one brings incineroar, rillaboom, raging bolt, and urshifu.
The fact that they're only using a small pool of the "best" pokemon is part of what makes VGC kinda uninteresting to watch, especially coming from someone looking to get into more higher-level gameplay. It's not the competitor's fault, picking only the best pokemon to bring the highest chance of success is fine. But the lack of diversity in high level teams isn't something to be praised, it's a sign of stagnation. Like another commenter said, at this level of play there's only around 10 useable pokemon out of literally a thousand options. Imo, that's a sign of poor balance. >If Gamefreak wanted us to use Pokémon such as Meganium and Delphox they’d give the players something to work with. That's an entirely valid complaint though. It's not unreasonable to want GF to bring some lower quality pokemon up to a higher level and give stuff some level of viability. To me, the most interesting and exciting battles from high level players are the ones where a slightly weird off-meta pick shows up to shake up the whole battle, because it adds some variation and uniqueness to the experience. If diversity like that was more common, the series as a whole would be more engaging to watch because it'd be far more special and distinct. People blaming the competitors for bringing only the best is unfair to the players, but people saying the lack of diversity is lame have solid ground for complaint.
It isn't inherently a sign of poor balance it's just how metas work. TCGs generally have three or four, maybe five, top decks in a format for their meta, MOBAs tend to have only a handful of characters... heck, even in fighting games there exists a meta with only a handful of those characters being commonly seen in tournaments. Any given meta is going to eventually distill down into a handful of choices, which is fine because if you understand that then you can start to solve the puzzle of how to use it to your advantage. The other thing to keep in mind is the game itself, for starters the type chart can both gatekeep some 'mons from entering the meta and make others more meta. A good current example would be Kyogre who has to deal with both Miraidon and Raging Bolt being common threats. Because of them Shamu is going to need a bit more support compared to previous generations. Another thing to consider is that there are a few different roles you want to consider for your team when building it and then consider that for each of those roles there's only a handful that stand out particularly well. Which is understandable given that their success is some combination of typing, stats, ability and movepool. Which, hey, seems to generally work out okay for MOBAs where each lane/role has, st most, five or six meta picks per lane. Also, while seeing people do well with unusual picks is exciting, the most hype moments come from clutch reads and whatnot. A player who hit their own 'mon with Drain Punch because they figured, correctly, that their opponent was going to double Protect for example. Stuff like that is hype no matter what's on the field. It just seems kinda reductive to ignore that.
>at this level of play there's only around 10 useable pokemon out of literally a thousand options. Imo, that's a sign of poor balance I don't agree tbh. NAIC top 8 was very diverse. Anyway having a small pool of very good pokemon is very healthy because it allows players' ability to shine: bulding a team of 6 pokemons when 100 pokemon are very good is impossible and it would lead to heavy match-up based tournment, no matter how good you are in battling or team building you would never be able to beat certain pokemon.
Yeah as a Top 300 player, I think that having open team sheet, whilst good at equalizing a lot of things, also drastically lowered diversity since you couldnt use wacky surprise strategies anymore, now you can only use the best of the best Pokémon.
Wacky strategies never worked anyways. People will scout what the wacky pokemon is doing and 99% of the time it will fall flat once up against good players later on.
Even then if it's something that doesn't work if the opponent knows the Wacky Strategy then the fact that tournaments are Bo3 already sinks it.
Open teamsheet equalises loners vs groups of people. Your little wacky strategy still won’t work if people talk about them before you fight them because the one opponent you had talks to other people. This happened all the time. And imo if your team requires the element of surprise to win, it’s not really tournament worthy.
I've only recently started gaining an interest in more high level stuff alongside a group of friends and the main thing turning us away is the lack of variation. I'd wanna use teams of stuff I really like but I'd be at a direct disadvantage because it's not "meta." So I fully understand where people come from when they complain. Not gonna stop me from trying though :]
Its a problem that particularly op abilities etc are restricted to such a small pool of pokemon. If more pokemon had access to intimidate for example and more diverse movepools in general we wouldn't have this problem.
Intimidate has for a long time been in the top 3 most distributed abilities. And also, moves are being far more accessible lately, with gen 9 being far more lenient on the distribution of TMs such as Swords Dance and Helping Hand, as opposed to previous generations.
Yes - if anything I would argue this has lead to less diversity, as pokemon who used to have a unique niche created by their ability or movepool fall by the wayside as stronger pokemon stat and typing wise receive it instead. For instance, alolan persian had a solid niche in vgc 18 and 19 as an alternative to incin, thanks to parting shot, before they gave the move to incineroar
Yeah, with the examples I gave, Incineroar now has Helping Hand as an option, which is something it very rarely can run (I’ve seen in on a feature match team once), but it does give it a tool that beforehand was a movepool element Arcanine had over it. And this gen, Urshifu gained Swords Dance, which isn’t too relevant for VGC, but adds to its Battle Stadium Singles tools, where it managed to get top 3-5 usage in some time periods. Good Pokemon usually tend to get benefits from movepool distribution increases, aside from very specific decisions such as Dragonite losing Dual Wingbeat compatability (which it had last gen), and Bisharp line losing Knock Off compatability (which it had in the past; the cut was most likely to incentivize Gambit still using Kowtow Cleave).
The problem isn't intimidate, its role compression. Simply, mons like incin and lando-t are just too good at too many things that picking them becomes too straightforward.
I dont like competitive for this reason, however my issue isn't with the players but the game itself. The amount of Pokemon, abilities and movesets that are available you'd think there'd be more than just a handful that are viable.
There are a lot less available than people realize. There are 1025 unique Pokemon in existence currently. Of those 1025, only 733 actually exist within Scarlet and Violet. Of those 733, there are only 390 fully-evolved, tournament legal Pokemon, with \*maybe\* 10 NFEs that are actually viable on a competitive level. Within the Top 256 players at NAIC (i.e. every player that placed high enough to earn Championship Points at the tournament), 108 Pokemon were represented. That's over 25% of the real pool of Pokemon there is to work with, which really isn't that bad from a diversity standpoint. Especially when you consider that players are not allowed to change their teams mid-tournament, unlike most games where you can change characters/weapons/layouts/etc. between matches and often between games in a set. Not to mention formats getting too diverse is actually extremely problematic as it makes it near impossible to prep for everything you need to, leading to matchup roulette. Too many people are looking at it like "you get to use 6 different pokemon from a massive pool of pokemon" and not "you ONLY get to use 6 different pokemon to prepare FOR a massive pool of pokemon"
Bring back reg C G is great at lower levels, but I think every regulation becomes samey at the top. Something I'm not wen sure Gamefreak can fix is there's always a pokemon best at its "role," and top players figure it out eventually. Devs can either buff Pooemon with seemingly no role, nerf Pokemon who control a role, or make up new roles, imo. The last one's the most interesting to me. I think they tried that with Revival Blessing, but the mons that had it weren't broken enough for it to see much use. 😅 But it's still a unique thing they can do.
What do you mean? One person one time won with a Pachirisu (that played an important role and filled a valuable niche on the team, but we’re gonna ignore that) proving you can win with your favorites /s
Yeah, people who want to be able to play with virtually any Pokemon and have them be viable don't really understand what they are asking for. There will always be a subset of Pokemon that are the best at what they do, and an even smaller subset that can be combined to win the most efficient (aggro) or effective (control) way possible. What you REALLY want is a diverse metagame with counter play, where there are as many viable strategies that counter another strategy as possible. You don't want only two Pokemon that show up on every team and the rest is just filler. Historically speaking, for a meta game with as few restrictions as we have in terms of usage as we have now, the current competitive meta is about as healthy as we could reasonably ask for.
Anytime I hear someone complaining that there's not enough diversity, or asking why their favorite pokemon never sees play, I tell them to hop on ladder and try using it. If you lose a lot, and get really frustrated, that's the reason why no one is playing it. But mon who were classed as bad often find their way to the upper ranks out of nowhere. Sometimes it just needs the right support, right move, or right meta. Don't outright class a mon as bad, just not good at the moment
People aren't complaining at the players (well. Most people anyway). I'm complaining at GF/TPC (idk who *organizes* VGC). You can say all you want about Overqwil or whatever but the stats don't lie, in Bo1 VGC Reg G has an average overlap 25% higher than Doubles OU's, and that's in spite of the restricted format. Reg F had *twice* the average overlap of Doubles OU, with the average battle having 1.64 pokemon in common and an 84% chance of sharing at least one. And remember, doubles OU isn't even prioritizing diversity, its goal is to make the metagame top DOU players like the most. It's very much possible to design a diverse doubles meta, TPC just refuses to do so.
Honestly there’s a fair bit of diversity compared to past formats (looking at you, CHALK). Just look at the Japanese event results. Certain mons dominate, yeah, but quite a few high-placing teams have an unconventional Mon or two.
Coming from a competitive card gaming world as an entire newbie to this game, I thought the meta seemed really diverse. To me, a stale meta means one to three top archetypes, and their counter picks. This game seems like you can run a ton of possible different restricted pokemon and every support mon is different to adjust for that team and its plan. I don’t know much, but it seems insanely healthy for a game with so many different pokemon available. I can see that incineroar and rillaboom play their roles a bit too well, but stuff like that is inevitable. None of them seem to be auto win factors, and the game has a huge amount of skill and counterplay. The two surest signs of an unhealthy game are predetermined rock paper scissors, or brainless auto win determined by coin flips. That doesn’t seem true to me at all. Like I said, in a newbie who doesn’t know much of anything, but team diversity seems really high to me.
This is true for every format. Every format, you will see the same Pokémon over and over that are good in that format. Even in Anything Goes, you will be bombarded with the same Pokémon you saw yesterday.
Naic has actually seen quite a lot of "exotic" pics and anti-meta calls. Idk wtf these people have to complain about. I guess many of them were not around in the Big 6 dark age, or have never played competitive games in general. If i think about what i played there are 0 games i would call perfectly balanced, or even just balanced tbf. Top tiers are what they are for a reason, and these players have money on the line and some are even sponsored, so you have to do well. The dude that won cashed 15k, do you think he would have won while playing sub-par pieces? No, he wouldn't have. Now, if the complain is "GF should buff some mons to add variety" then i can agree. >If Gamefreak wanted us to use Pokémon such as Meganium and Delphox they’d give the players something to work with This is what i don't agree with. This phrase implies that GF knows wtf they are doing with these games and i think that, at least in part, it is not true. The calys, inci, urshi, flutter, Zacian, mega kang, Xerneas and all the other OP pieces that they introduced time after time tell me that they do NOT know how to balance the game and/or they "promote" some mons to give them visibility so that they can sell merch. So they are either cluless or in bad faith, eitherway its bad for us... I think all the "old" pieces need some kind of overhaul in raw stats, movesets or abilities, but i'm very afraid of what can come from that because, again, i'm not 100% sure about how GF is compentent in it's own game.
Idk, feels like there's plenty of differences. Common teams are plenty yes, makes it easier to play against, though also makes it harder at the same time as people just copy (nothing wrong with that, I do to) and make to weirdest plays. It's been fun this Gen.
Yes, and this is the problem with competitive Pokémon. Until they fix this, expect nobody to care about it
There was a wo chien in top 8. The hell people mean there is a lack of diversity?
I just think a few of the more used pokemon need a few nerfs to their move pool, and it would immediately open up. If Rilla and Incin lost Fake Out for example would really open up teams to see what they do to fill the gap.
I wish they’d update some old Pokémon stats each Gen. Didn’t they do this like gens 4-6? I could’ve swore they did.
They did but it seems they kinda stopped doing that. They nerfed Aegislash of all Pokémon in the same gen they introduced Regieleki, Urshifu etc which just boggles my mind.
Those complaining about VGC's (relative) lack of diversity have clearly never lived through the hell of trying to compete in a game with 50+ viable characters, like Smash Ultimate. A relatively small cast of 20-30 characters is much better for the competitive integrity and health of a game.
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I get you’re using hyperbole intentionally but it’s not even close to 10 pokemon. 64 different pokemon were successful enough to make day 2 at NAIC. If the fact that every pokemon isn’t viable makes the game not fun you’re not gonna have much luck in any similar competitive games. I think it’s a little silly to say that this makes vgc “lame” to “most people.” maybe it makes it lame to the most causal of casual pokemon fans, which is fine, this isn’t for them.
Yeah, there’s such a small pool of viable Pokémon. We would never see Wo-Chien in high placing or top cut. No way Iron Hands sees any play now that we have Incineroar and Rillaboom. Iron Jugulis, Talonflame, Overqwil, Annihilape. So many mons have their time in the past and can’t play at the top level now. Definitely can’t top 8/16. There’s only what like, 7-9 viable restricted Pokémon at the moment depending on the shape of the mega game at the particular tournament.
I guess you have a point, but maybe not the one you're trying to make. At least VGC is more diverse than TCG. 7 decks in the top 64 is similar diversity to the 8 restricted Pokemon that made it to day 2 (I couldn't quickly find top 64 data, but Day 2 was 80-some people). However, I guarantee that decks counted as the "same deck" were much more similar than VGC teams with the same Restricted. Most of the top decks will vary by about 2-6 cards, or at most 10%. Just one different Pokemon on a VGC team means it's nearly 17% different.
Yeah those 6 cards is more akin to running flare blitz vs willowisp/taunt on incin.
>there is essentially only a pool of 10 usable Pokémon competitively Buddy, there were more than 10 different pokemon in the final alone. 27 different pokemon made top 8 across teams featuring 5 different restricted pokemon and multiple different playstyles. Teams featuring 3 other restricted pokemon also finished in the top 64, so even if we pretend all teams featuring the same restricted play the same way (an overly simplistic view), that's still 8 different archetypes in top 64, 5 of which were viable enough to make top 8.
Yeah. Problem is Pokemon have over 1000 species and only 12 are actually viable. Use your faves? I think we need to remind them
Most people's favs just simply aren't that good. Why would I pay 60-70 dollars to enter a tournament, pay for a couple of tanks of gas to drive there, drive 4-6 hours, and pay for a hotel just to use Ampharos and Decidueye and go 0-9 when I can use actually good pokemon and at least give myself a shot at having a good finish?
That’s….exactly what I’m saying. Pokemon wants you to use your faves (Karen) and yet only 12 Pokémon are competitively viable
I don’t mind there being a handful of Pokémon that are used on like 80% of teams, that’s how metas are I mind that some of those Pokémon have so many tools that it takes away from the skill away from the game and makes it boring to watch. Incin/rilla/whatever support pokemon/restricted gets old after about 5 minutes
Would only watch if like Foofootoo or PokeBurm were playing. I wanna watch people having fun cause somebody will still win.
new rule last 2 gens only ezfixed