People shit on the signature move spam and like i get it, but also I'd much rather have a bunch of pokemon with wacky unique moves over "this guy is the exact same as last guy but he's slightly more minmaxed and has like one extra good move"
@edgargaebolg9307 gamefreak really should do the gen 5-7 guimmick again of giving broken non-signature moves to random underpowered and forgotten pokemon (and then to like one new strong pokemon to just take the piss)
I agree i think signature moves are great like at the least for this generation this pokeom will be the ONLY ONE with this move, which lets it do something no other pokemon can giving you a reason to use this new pokemon over an old one that fills the same role.
signature move spam would feel alot better if they eventually increased distribution of the moves over time kinda like they did with mystical fire and spikey shield
I hope false swipe gaming will do "how GOOD was base 100 speed ACTUALLY". He did say that this speed tier could have its own video back when he was talking about charizard. this speed isn't as good as it used anymore. I think that 120 is the new 100.
Definitely yeah, i would say 110 personally, since its the speed of Ogerpon, Iron Moth, the Latis, and MegaDiancie - then the real speed demons lie just past that, with Val at 116, Moon and Ace at 119, Sneasler at 120, and Gren/Meow/TornT/Noivern/Boulder/Weavile just past the 120 barrier There’s a reason Walking Wake feels almost slow at 109 outside of SunBooster
Something left unexamined is the impact this power creep can have on the options you have to play with. New strong pokemon can be interesting, but it's more interesting when it increases the options you have rather reducing them by overshadowing them.
I would imagine it's very hard to actively achieve that. You can aim for it of course but I find with most game balancing, something will just about beat out something else. I do agree though, having more good options rather than strictly better options is a great way to go about balancing.
The fact that moves get better on average is mostly because GameFreak doesn’t introduce as many wide spread new moves anymore and new moves are usually Signature Moves who are meant to be stronger and special. Also Power Creep did Scorvillain dirty. Poor fella couldn’t even hold his unique type combo for one generation…
Scovillain would have been a terrible pokemon even in gen 3. its frail and slow so that it can hit hard with its choice of physical or special moves. its actually Meowscarada, Skeledirge, Quaquaval, and Toedscruel that are balanced powercreep mons in gen 9, as none of them were designed to invalidate all prior starters, or in the case of Toedscruel, intentionally kept from exploiting Spore naturally
@ I meant that Scorvillain was a victim of Power Creep. He has that cool unique Fire/Grass-Typing that maybe could have given him some relevance and immediately lost it to Ogerpon when the DLC came out.
@@T.W.0 I wonder if it's the other way. Did they purposefully underpower Scovillian to have it not outshine Oger-H when it was introduced later. Mainly because it's not like they didn't start working on the Teal Mask until after the base game is done (as shown by Terapagos already being designed in order to be hinted in the book) Game Freak also runs into/creates the issue of needing to balance pokemon both being a competitive game, as well as a single player game. So they make mons that are "meant" to only be used in the midgame, with better options in late game that you are mechanically incentivised to replace them with. The classic 2 stages that have only "ok" BSTs.
It helps that newer moves are clearly designed to be competitive, a lot less basically worthless stinkers nowadays. I like to use Bide as the example. It's shocking Bide stuck around as long as it did. But Bide is also the perfect use case for how buffing older, less reliable moves could make them have a use case. Imagine if Bide had like 250% the damage. So a bulky defensive pokemon using Bide effectively makes it a Reverse taunt. DONT use attacking moves or you'll have the Bide n' Blast blow you up when it goes off. Yes, that was intentional. But it also (I think) excellently demonstrates that older moves that just don't get used can be made viable through increasing their power or effectiveness.
You made some good points, and I liked the graphs. But, saying that releasing average strength Pokemon is bad marketing is a very weak argument. I don't think anyone has bought a Pokemon game because they heard the new legendary is OP. Casuals buy the games because they love Pokemon, and competitors buy the games because tournaments are held in the newest game. The relative strength of the new Pokemon is irrelevant to sales imo.
Casuals aren’t mindless drones that just buy Pokémon game because of cool animals. If ever noticed the most used Pokemon in a play through, you’ll see they use good competitive Pokemon too. In Gen 4 Lucario, Staraptor, Garchomp, and Infernape are all popular casually and all insanely good in Gen 4 competitive.
Місяць тому+30
@@GrandHacstarter, gift- and early route Pokémon are understandable to stick with. Garchomp is one you have to go out of your way to get, though, I will give you that.
@@GrandHac Casuals buy them cause "it's the new Pokemon game" These games sell millions of copies in their first few days, there are no thoughts about a meta in there Strong Pokemon get popular cause they help people through the game, but at that point they already bought it
I honestly think ability‘s are the biggest factor in power creep. Yes, stats are getting more min maxed and moves are becoming more generally powerful but with these things you can only push the numbers so far. Ability‘s basically let you say „I want this pokemon to whatever I want“ and that’s kind of what they’ve been doing. People talk about Mewtwo having below average typing and stats for a modern restricted and that’s true but it also has… pressure. For a nother example look at how much worse Zacian got upon having it’s ability nerved. The -20 attack isn’t what did it in, it’s the fact intrepid sword is only once per battle. Ability‘s are becoming more and more important and yes, more creative too. If you wanted to buff old pokemon better ability‘s wouldn’t be the only thing many of them need but it would be a very good starting point.
For real on the Mewtwo part, it is completely outclassed in basically every way by caly shadow. It just has slightly better bulk and way better coverage. Give it neuroforce to make use of that coverage and give the ability a home now that there's no ultra necrozma, and buff psystrike to 120 BP while you're at it. Then it might see a little play
In Gen 1, Mewtwo's typing was very good, and it's 154 Special essentially gave it a base stat total of 744 if you treated it as having 154 Special Defense.
Mewtwo doesn't even have bad stats for a restricted mon. 130 base Speed is notably less than 135 base Speed (So less than Koraidon, Miraidon, and Flutter Mane), but it still comfortably clears a bunch of relevent mons like Urshifu, Ogerpon, and Chi-Yu. Its bulk isn't that bad thanks to its above average 106 base HP, and it still holds the top 6 spot on the list of current gen mons with the highest Sp. Atk (even reaching top 3 if you filter out any sub-100 base Speed mons). If we're looking at purely stats, then Ho-oh, Lugia, Kyogre, Groudon, and Rayquaza _all_ have far worse stat distribution. But the thing is, those mons do have _way_ better Abilities. Give Mewtwo a Psychic boosting weather or Psychic Surge and it would cook. Give Mewtwo a weather or terrain nullifying Ability and it would cook. Give Mewtwo Multiscale and it would cook. But Pressure and Unnerve... give those Abilities to Koraidon/Miraidon and watch them fall to B- tier viability in all restricted formats.
@@jinnizi @QuizzicalQuaquaval see that's the thing. both of you have a point. game freak needs to find a balance between making the competitive scene boring by keeping all the old mons just as relevant as the new ones and designing broken mons that will ALWAYS be relevant. its very easy to find examples of the latter (urshifu in doubles, kingambit in singles) but a good example of the former would prolly be gen 6 (both formats). literally none of the new gen 6 mons were that good, probably bc of the megas.
I personally think small buffs to older pokemon over time could help combat power creep. An example of this is Electrode getting 10 extra speed points in Gen 7
New signature moves seems like the best choice, chilly reception in SV has done wonders for Slowking as it give pivot and weather setting without changing anything about Slowking itself. Giving Internage a fire type Mach punch for itself to give a unique role with fire priority, or giving Magcargo a version of sunny day that also as a protect move could bring new light to a lot of older gen mon.
Honestly, my only gripe with power creep is how it makes some Pokemon “old Pokemon but better” But if power creep has to exist then there are two things that I want to see continue or see more of 1. Make sure some of the Pokemon in a generation are intentionally bad, have their appeal be their design or a niche combination of type, ability, and move pool 2. Buff older Pokemon with new moves, abilities, and possibly increased BST to make sure they don’t just become weaker versions of new Pokemon Also I think keeping most of the power creep to legendaries, mythicals, and other group categories (Ultra Beasts and Paradox Pokemon) is a good idea, one reason being that it creates a divide for players who don’t want to mess with power creep and another reason being that the real world isn’t all “Canada has stronger animals because it was founded after America”
VGC Reg H perfectly proves your last point, as banning all the legendaries/mythicals/paradoxes really allows for a more diverse competitive scene that isn't filled with the same few mons like it was in Reg G
Then there is arceus the most balanced, no difference between attacking and defending stats No stat over 140 No Broken ability that destroys part of the game like ignoring status And also needs to hold an item to change forms
I just wish that old Pokemon would get incremental buffs to keep them relevant. Like if Garchomp ever became bad, they’d give it Dragon Dance. Edit: also Gyarados needs a better movepool now, holy balls. Give that guy Brave Bird, Roost, and Wave Crash ffs, all its attacks have such low base power.
I think garchomp is kind of a poor example, cause garchomp is still highly used in vgc. Something like lucario. It got power crept by a lot of better fighting types and is basically never used in vgc. It def needs some changed to make it viable.
I wonder how much it would really change things. They gave Tyranitar knock off which would’ve been absurd in like Gen 6 and 7 but didn’t really help him
@hunterkinsella5303 it should have better defense, the steel typing doesn't feel like it's enough to cover for lucarios terrible defense Or give it adaptability as it's hidden ability instead of locking it to it's mega evolution, at least it'll make up for it being really frail
Power creep doesn't have to be as intense as it has been in the past couple of generations. Incremental power creep is good enough and does the job. Otherwise, we would end up like Yu-Gi-Oh. And Yugioh is insane, as a yugioh player.
We absolutely do not need power creep to push sales, lets be extremely real here. TPC could release Pokemon Trash and Pokemon Garbage with absolutely not a single Pokemon stronger than the previous gens, but if there are good or charming pokemon designs in it, people would buy them in droves. Remember: The games dont drive up profits for TPC, its merchandise.
Honestly my problem is not with the new Pokémon with minmaxed stats and ridiculous abilities. It's with the broken new moves that older mons don't get access to. Fishious Rend, Rage Fist, Last Respects, Population Bomb, Lumina Crash, Jet Punch, Ivy Cudgel, Wicked Blow and Surging Strikes are crimes against humanity and throw any semblance of balance out the window.
You would think Pokémon like Seaking, known for spamming Horn Drill, would get Fishious Rend, which is effectively an OHKO move. Even thematically, it does not make sense.
@@iantaakalla8180that’s because Fishious Rend is technically an inaccurate translation. The move is called “Gill Bite” in Japan, and Seaking doesn’t really bite with its gills
Technically there’s potential Last Respects does get added to older Pokémon as it technically isn’t a signature move. Houndstone and Basculegion get it, and yeah that’s not really saying much as they’re both effectively Gen 9 Pokémon, I think it’s likely it will be retro-actively given to older Pokémon in Gen 10. The only criteria it seems to have is that it needs to be on a Pokémon with a connection to souls that isn’t malicious, so I can see it being given to Pokémon like Dusknoir and whatnot.
To be honest, I actually think it would be great to see more early game moves introduced. A lot of Pokémon don't have an early game move in their move pool that matches their stab types and their stronger attacking Stat. For example, Tinkatink has to rely on fairy wind and draining kiss until it gets play rough as a Tinkaton. I think introducing more early game moves of different attacking stats would make certain Pokémon a lot more bearable to use early game
6:25 "They can't just change these stats completely." Sure they can, they just choose not to. They've done so in the past, but it's only really been minor buffs to certain Pokemon's stats, and even then they usually underperformed after the buffs. Gamefreak just refuses to go whole-hog and give Pokemon that are never used a stat rework. Even the miniscule stat buffs that were given to certain Pokemon over the generations caused them to gain some traction since they were better than before, even if not by much. Imagine if they gave some select Pokemon entire stat reworks to account for the Physical/Special split? And no, I don't mean like Mega evolutions. Gamefreak are just too cowardly to try it, and it's always kinda ticked me off when people defend it as "they can't". A great video regardless, but I didn't really like that point. Pretty much everything else has no holes.
Fair enough, it is definitely less that they can't do it and more that they won't do it. Whatever their reason though, it still doesn't change the fact that older Pokémon will not have their stats completely changed to account for the physical/special split.
@@x_bell1142 Indeed. I understood your general point, but dang it if I don't have a little hope that they might do a stat rework for some mons some day!
saying that gholdengo is balanced is a controversial opinion. while this pokemon wasn't banned in smogon some players considered it ban worthy. in the past generations defog was the most reliable way to remove hazards, the only counterplay was to taunt the defoger. now gholdengo blocks this move thanks to its ability while also blocking rapid spin and the newly introduced mortal spin. it is not by any means a "broken" pokemon ,but you can say it is slightly unbalanced.
Tbh Gholdengo is definitely not unbalanced especially not in the current Post Dlc2 metagame. You could argue it was maybe a bit overbearing in early S/V and Dlc1 OU but rn its completely fine. Imo Gholdengo is a lot like Lando-T where its really good in doing what it does resulting in it having a very high usage but not to the point where it can't be countered
I’m just salty that they decided that THIS was the gen they were going to pull back on the base stats of bugs. Lokix deserves better. It’s amazing what they can do despite their relatively low BST, but it definitely still holds them back
It wasn't even the first time they did 'em dirty, remember kricketune being given a lower base stat total than butterfree and friggin' ledian? And then having stealth rock introduced to give them all basically zero chance of switching in?
Another banger vid, identifies the idea very clearly, clarifies stance, and then intelligently outlines outliers. You make some of my favorite content, I love your vids
Dude, you got to be one of the best competitive pokémon related UA-camrs coming your voice isn't annoying you can actually keep me hooked on the topic for a while, good job bro you earned yourself a sub
power creep is not inherently a bad thing, i just think we’re straying towards unhealthy forms of power creep as opposed to healthy. i still cant believe unseen fist and flower trick are real moves
Hands down one of the best up and coming poke tubers. I always learn something new from your videos, and as a longtime Pokemon fan, I really appreciate all the work that goes into to making your videos. Keep up the great work!
Fluttermane is what mismagius could of been. I do hope they decide to buff older pokemon by giving them stat increases, new abilities, and moves like they did with empoleon, torterra, dugtrio and swellow.
Huge baseball fan here, I definitely agree Babe Ruth would get smoked in today’s MLB. Average fastball speed in the 1920’s was about 85-90 mph, and now you have pitchers tossing 90 mph sliders…
I do not play singles, but Jimothy Cool, a UA-camr that does a lot of singles content, has actually made a video on this exact thing. I recommend you check it out: ua-cam.com/video/jby5hr7oe_Q/v-deo.htmlsi=QRHtEaAfG3eJ0sLs
It would have been nice to use a box and whisker graph instead of a bar chart to get a better indication of the attribute spread per generation. The upper bounds of a generation is probably more indicative of power creep than the average
Gotta hard agree with Ogerpon being a well done version of power creep. It's role compression is also next level with follow me and different forms, but still feels fair. Love the sports comparison even though I do not follow sports much it makes sense!
Dude, of all the Pokemon games I ever bought, never did I once buy a game with the intention of hoping to find stronger Pokémon than the last game. Different Pokémon sure. But I never picked up a game simply because I thought the Legendary Pokémon marketed on the game case were strong and would give me some sort of advantage in battle. It took me up until black and white before Some guy even introduced me to the concept of Competitive battles, IVs/EVs and everything that goes with it. Hell, despite hearing about events back in like 07, I didn’t even know how they worked. That’s how casual I was, and I would bet money that’s how casual most Pokémon fans are. I owned *10 different Pokémon games* before I even had a passing thought about the viability of any given Pokémon from a competitive level. The whole bit about needing to market these new Pokémon as strong, purely for the sake of making the purchase of them seem worth a damn, sounds incorrect. Or at least strong in the competitive sense, because I don’t think I’ve ever heard Game Freak market a Pokémon with something like “This new Pokémon is sure to be top three in Ubers this year! This Pokémon is a top tier Sweeper!” or even “This Pokémon will let you win against your friends every single time!”. Casuals might not even have a clue what you’re talking about if you said anything related to the competitive side of battling. Overall this particular point in this video does not seem like a reasonable case for Power Creep.
Powercreep in Chess is pretty crazy tbh. An 11 year old now could probably beat a Grandmaster in the 1920s just because of how much Chess computers have advanced and the amount of techniques that we can learn from them
Don't get me wrong, you are overall right.I think about this for almost anything. They have to give a reason for you to come back/get the new thing/etc. etc... Always gotta keep them interested and "1-up" yourself. BUT. Notice how the points going against power creep were longer than the small portion of it at the end lol.
Personally I don't think power creep is bad per se, but it requires to be balanced. If a Pokémon that is very strong is introduced, then previous Pokémon must receive buffs that are of a similar power level to that new Pokémon. I personally think that Game Freak is a coward for refusing to do large changes. Pokémon like Altaria and Absol should've been part-Fairy, but Game Freak refuses to give them that because it fears change. Pokémon like Zangoose should've been much faster, but Game Freak refuses to give them that. Swampert should've had Regenerator, but Game Freak refuses to give it that. Iron Fist should've boosted Punch-based Moves by 1.5x, and Close Combat should be classified as a Punch-based Move. The type chart should be completely overhauled. Old Pokémon should receive generational buffs, and what Game Freak is currently doing is not nearly enough. Smogon should also create much more tiers, like the Pokémon Perfect system.
@@lordmew5 A system of Pokémon tiering in which tiers continue to be made until every Pokémon, Form, and pre-Evolution has a tier in which it is competitively-viable. The tiers are also named after numbers, for simplicity's sake. For example, ZU is made into a tier. Then 7U, 8U, 9U, and so on are made into tiers, until every Pokémon -- even the likes of Feebas -- are given a viable tier. Of course, some of this could also be substituted with the addition of more tiers to NFE and LC, but that is the general idea.
@Au_Solar_Eclipse_Au yea, I just read that, guys' entire rule explanation, and it's the greatest thing I've ever read by a pokemon player. The only real issue i had was that he didn't go far enough to get rid of the sleep clause entirely.
it would honestly be hype af if they went out of their way to do some min max rebalancing to mons prior to gen 3 and also introduce some new abilities to them
It seems that Game Freak will only do that if it's for a generational gimmick, like how crazy min-maxed Mega Beedrill's stats were, but it seems that they refuse to do a complete overhaul for the base Pokémon.
I’d argue a lot of Gen 3 mons also severely need to be rebalanced. For some reason Game Freak absolutely loved making slow frail mixed attackers in the GBA era, the vast majority of which have aged like milk even discounting Powercreep.
Oh yeah I'm definitely on board with gen 10 introducing a fighting/fairy urshifu variant with unblockable, guaranteed, hit 100% crit fairy move with a bunch of returning mons from gens 1-8 that only youtubers will use on ladder for their thumbnails now. i honestly never thought it of it THAT way before😲😲
i completely agree with this take. i think comparing power creep to inflation, and giving real life examples made the point clearer. a wise decision. overall, no notes. just commenting for the algorithm, lol
One concept that I appreciate in relation to power creep is complexity creep whereby new pokemon aren't necessarily stronger through pure stats/moves/abilities but rather encourage creative use of their strengths and efforts to dimish weaknesses. The two that come to mind are perish trap teams and Weezing's neutralizing gas ability. These teams can be very strong, but notably require players to think about the game on different axes and adapt to uncommon situations. This is the kind of power creep I really like, and seems to be encouraged in rulesets like Regulation H.
I could definitely get on board with that - instead of just straight up making newer Pokémon stronger, make their uses more different to encourage more creative use.
Power creep is most definately inevitable it's just that it's so sad to see pokemon that used to be absolute powerhouses like tyranitar, garchomp, rotom, latios, etc... become completely unused because they can't keep up anymore. It makes me think that we're moving too fast already
The graphs in the beginning are really visually misleading. None of them originate at 0, instead starting at much higher numbers, making them appear proportionally more disparate than they actually are. For instance, the average BST graph goes from 370 to 470. The average BST in generation 1 was 427, while the average BST in generation 9 is 463; generation 9's average is only 8.4% higher than generation 1's. However, because of the graph layout, generation 9's average appears to be over 60% higher than generation 1's. While I don't think this was intentional, it does make the disparity between generations appear far more dramatic than intended, and even though the actual numbers shown are all correct, the visual layout could give the wrong impression to viewers not paying close attention. Great video though! I've always been a little upset by how people respond to powercreep. It's always sad when our faves aren't as good as they used to be, but if newer Pokemon weren't a little bit stronger or more unique, we'd end up with several generations where the competitive scene feels fairly samey. As an aside, I think your explanation there is also one of the reasons why Dexit was doomed to happen. There's only so much powercreep that can be done without making Pokemon totally ridiculous, and at some point in order to keep that variety, they need to cut out some Pokemon so that newer ones don't need to be totally broken to stand out. Obviously there's other reasons for Dexit, most of them being relevant for the casual scene, but it definitely helps keep the generations healthy and free of bloat.
This was intentional because that's the goal of a bar graph. If I had all the graphs start at zero, the difference would look completely negligible which is not the point that I'm trying to get across. Some other commenters suggested doing a box and whisker plot for each generation instead, which I do think would have been better than a bar graph now that I look back at it.
Completely agreed. I haven't played past Gen 5 but I still loosely follow the franchise, I am all for power creep because I know how often people will just stick with what's good. But at the same time I will be the first to call out the egregious examples. I can't tell you how angry I was when I learned that Fairy type, the type that was added to optimize the type chart RESISTED my beloved Bug type... -_- Because bug really didn't (doesn't) need a buff...... riiiiight.
I don't think the "good" cases of power creep you mentioned can even be considered that. In fact power creep itself absolutely ruins older pokemon that havent been touched making them irrelevant and a throw pick in most circumstances. Pokemon has to be one of the worst cases of power creep in any video game the past 3 generations because of the amount of new abilities, moves, and insanely distributed stats. It's different from a meta changing or one pokemon being slightly better than another from a previous generation. There is a clear 100% better pokemon to use over an old one since the past 3 generations. They either need to revist older pokemon and make them more viable/redistribute their stats, or not make completely broken ones that you are forced to use if you want to win like fluttermane or goldengo.
Honestly, i think the better answer is just to actually do the dex cuts and make geographical region power. For example, kanto hoenn johto and sinnoh could be 1 big region that has one unified dex and government. These mons and any games that take place will have one general power level range. You can even give them split evolutions for different regions like vulpix in the galar region evolve into a different mon or have a different, longer evolutionary line due to the stronger power level.
I think it's funny how most of the bad power creeps are done by legendaries/mythical/paradox, since they are kinda supposed to be stronger than the average Pokémon. Maybe they were balanced around their limited accessibility on the main campaign and not around their competitive prowess? Idk
Your point about move power is awful. Of course they're not adding Pound 3, or Cut 2, or Wing Attack 2. 40-80 power moves with marginal secondary effects are just meant to be replaced as you level up. Weak moves are meant to be for the early game single player, and no way supposed to be an option for team building.
I agree with most of the points you made, but why is it they can't just change an old pokemon stat distribution to make it more well balanced? I don't see how it affects the game negatively
I guess it's less that they can't do it and more that they won't do it. Game Freak will only ever add like 10, maybe 20 stat points to a Pokémon between generations, never a complete overhaul of stats.
Great video, but the only gripe I have is that the graphs never started at 0. This made a gap of what should be roughly 15% look like one was more than double the other (the gap between 412 and 463 in the average base stat total).
That's kind of the whole point of bar graphs though. If I were to have them them all start at 0, the changes would seem completely negligible. I messed around a lot with the intervals I used, I didn't just use the default ones from excel, to show that the changes are notable without exaggerating them too much.
You are right, this is standard practice in the industry in general, is taught in gamedev schools and, as you pointed in the video, is reflected in many other things like sports and economy Nice video
The base stats at the start are not that useful because each generation has a different amount of strong pokemon. It's possible that the general power level didn't go up, we just got gradually more disproportionately strong pokemon.
The base stats alone aren't supposed to be a tell-all sign of the power level of each generation, it is just one of the many things to look at when talking about power creep.
@krabsolfurretisme In my opinion, a nerf like Zacian is too much, in my opinion it should only be a smaller nerf, such as a smaller BP of signature move and maybe 165 atk/sp. reduce atk to 150
I feel like the main driving factor in power creep is they design pokemon with less inherent flaws. Look at Weavile where he's incredibly strong and fast but riddled fundamentally with flaws. But that was the point, you had to earn the value from that mon. Now with a mon like Gholdengo where while there are some flaws they are much easier to mitigate while also having super high highs as well. Or better would be Chein Pao who is Weavile but just with the needle much much sharper into the value that weavile achieves. It's the same design but now he has to get so much more out of it if he's going to have those flaws
To counter the min maxxing there should be a move/item/ability that forces an attacker to use their weaker offensive stat. Adds some incentive to keep mixed attackers around.
7, 8 and 9 are special cases because they have had either a new group of their Pokemon at basically legendary levels in the plot, or had DLC, which of course focusses on a legendary, or both.
Power creep isn’t coherent when applied to Pokemon. You have pretty clear examples of Pokemon like Clefable, Dragonite, and Moltres that have fluctuated in their viability throughout the years. Probably one of the least understood and most poorly applied pop game theory terms ever.
All 4 of the "good power creep" mons I think are examples of how ridiculous it's become. Zamazenta's speed is way too high, but it's a legendary so we can allow it. Rillaboom just took Bulu, who was already good, and got buffed in basically every way needed with it's move pool making it superb for doubles, and then the nonsense of grassy glide. Ogerpon overall I think is healthy until Tera is mentioned, although having a redirector who is that effective offensively feels a little iffy. Gholdengo in doubles feels somewhat ok. In singles, it's presence basically makes boots mandatory for a lot of mons. I think another way of viewing it is how few outright bad Pokémon we're getting, which I feel is a benefit of power creep, but it raises the floor so the ceiling can be so much higher
I really liked that almost every gen 9 pokemon had either a signature ability or signature move. It gave all of them a distinct personality in having that one thing that no one else could do.
Especially when they are not all that powerful. Like look at Dudunsparce with a 100 base power, 100% accurate move that hits through protect, and no one uses it.
Good video. I hesitate to consider Gholdengo very balanced, but I do agree it has its shortcomings that prevent it from being on the same level as the likes of Flutter Mane and Urshifu. Probably the worst thing about Flutter is that it sort of puts other special attacking ghosts and fairies out of a job - Iron Valiant's only managed to get usage in VGC for its support movepool and Enamorus is more or less MIA (though the all-around frailty of Valiant and Enam-I is certainly part of why they struggle to see much use in VGC, not to mention Enam's AWFUL availability in-game). I do think power creep is a good thing, when done right of course. With no power creep or new mechanics being introduced on a generational basis, I feel like generations would get too samey and the game would really stagnate after a while. Sure, Tyranitar is cool and all but do we really need it to dominate metagames generation after generation? That's not to say it and other strong Pokémon of past gens should be rendered totally worthless after a certain point (I'm a proponent of buffing old Pokémon more than nerfing newer ones), but new arrivals deserve their time in the spotlight as well and we shouldn't have too many old Pokémon take away from this if you ask me. Maybe GF will find a better balance come gen 10, but no matter what may happen, people should accept that power creep is inevitable and that the next gen will introduce Pokémon that will most likely push older ones out of relevance, including some gen 9 mons.
@x_bell1142 I think I could've mentioned Spectrier in the original comment as well - it has virtually no reason to be used with Flutter around either. And thanks to you as well! I appreciate your reply and I look forward to more videos of yours :)
I agree with everything you stated in the video but also still fully support the inclusion of Pokémon such as Flutter Mane, Calyrex and Spectrier/Glastrier, Urshifu etc. because in games with content as vast as Pokémon has, I kinda feel its necessary from a "fun to play" aspect to include them!
I’m actually into them not adding more bad moves. Like the weak moves they’re adding are more technical and have limited distribution. A lot of franchises will have a very limited set of basic moves that are pretty universal and then the builds get more specific at higher levels. I don’t really feel the need for 7 embers or another early game grass move.
Lets be honest, if the new games kept releasing Pokemon that were weaker than older Pokemon, people would complain about that too. I think it's also more difficult to maintain perfect balance than many people are willing to admit. Trying to create a bunch of new Pokemon, moves, abilities, and items every generation that are somehow perfectly well-balanced with all the pre-existing ones is virtually impossible. Perfect balance is totally unfeasible, and likely not even desirable.
I accounted for Mega Audino correctly - it just doesn't make a difference since it's the only mega in gen 5 and I am rounding to the nearest whole number.
Okay? Are you defending this position? That’s *BAD.* I don’t think anyone in the competitive scene actively prefers having less viable Pokémon in any given generation. Thats the entire point of this video. Power creep, as time goes on, will only serve to make that list of unviable/outclassed pokemon longer and longer and longer, until some Pokémon that were once usable are so bad, that they’re basically completely unusable content. You will be *forced* to use new Pokémon not out of preference, but necessity if you want to remain competitive. All of those unique Pokémon with distinguishing traits, stats, moves, abilities and playstyles, hell even just seeing those good old legacy Pokémon faces again, will simply just not be possible if you want to take it seriously. It has always sucked, even back when there was only one generation of Pokémon, that there were completely unusable, and unviable pokemon that could never be used in any real battling capacity. Brushing the power creep issue aside with, “There have always been outclassed pokemon”, is not a salient defense or some consolation that will magically make people open to the idea of power creep.
i've been thinking about min maxing recently and was wondering if rather than trying to look at each pokemon individually you look at the different roles pokemon are commonly used for in competitive singles/doubles and compare each pokemons stats to a hypothetical ideal stat distribution of their role/roles. So for example, you'd look at the role of "Physical Wall" or "Special Setup Sweeper" or "Hazard Setter" or "Support Pokemon" and figure out what an ideal stat distribution for these roles would look like (maybe there'd be some variance based on typing) and then you look at existing pokemon that fit these roles and see how well their stats (or more importantly stat distribution) compares to this ideal number (in terms of % of stats allocated, not raw numbers). I feel like this would not only help us figure out how good old vs new pokemon are and get a better sense of the level of power creep in pokemon but i also think it'd help us figure out how new pokemon (when for example gen 10 or Legends A-Z comes out) will perform and which role they might best be suited for by comparing and contrasting their numbers to these hypothetical ideals.
I just started so maybe you address this but I did notice gen 4 had a spike overall and then gens 7-9, another contributor is additional evolutions added later; if Pokémon are entering a new gen fully evolved without their previous evolutions to balance out the average a bit then that will inflate the numbers a bit too
Pokemon should have a mechanic that is meant to entice mixed attackers and benefit them. I think, maybe increasing the critical hit chance on moves hit in a Pokémon’s weaker defense stat and decreasing critical hits when hitting a Pokémon on the stronger defense stat is the start of an idea.
Personally I feel like Ursaluna, both regular and blood moon are perfect embodiments of what power creep should look like. Yes they are both incredibly strong, but they have drawbacks and average enough defenses that they aren’t game warping. They also check the boxes for me, nostalgia and wicked design. More ursaluna please and thank you @GameFreak
Another factor of powercreep is that it also competes with previous generations so outliers become the competitive standard. Tyranitar is a power outlier, so the bar for very good pokemon is set to that, not the average hoenn pokemon which was outclassed even in its day. Overtime teams need to allocate less slots to mediocre niche fillers as strong niche fillers nafurally arise simply because there are more good pokemon even if nothing ever got strictly better than tyranitar
0:15 I guess Deoxys Forms, too. 1:50 How are you counting power-variable moves? Wait, you said. 4:10 Clear body? 5:55 I might suggest a Tackle per type, but otherwise fair.
People shit on the signature move spam and like i get it, but also I'd much rather have a bunch of pokemon with wacky unique moves over "this guy is the exact same as last guy but he's slightly more minmaxed and has like one extra good move"
I mean sure, but older Pokemon end up being more uninteresting because they don't get anything unless there's a regional or a cross-evo form
@edgargaebolg9307 gamefreak really should do the gen 5-7 guimmick again of giving broken non-signature moves to random underpowered and forgotten pokemon (and then to like one new strong pokemon to just take the piss)
I agree i think signature moves are great like at the least for this generation this pokeom will be the ONLY ONE with this move, which lets it do something no other pokemon can giving you a reason to use this new pokemon over an old one that fills the same role.
@@edgargaebolg9307 Simple solution: give more signature moves to old Pokemon. Pokemon that aren't Mr Cheeks or Snorlax perhaps.
signature move spam would feel alot better if they eventually increased distribution of the moves over time kinda like they did with mystical fire and spikey shield
I hope false swipe gaming will do "how GOOD was base 100 speed ACTUALLY".
He did say that this speed tier could have its own video back when he was talking about charizard.
this speed isn't as good as it used anymore.
I think that 120 is the new 100.
well 120 is still a bit high though, but if you do count these brocken 135 speed mons in gen 9 then yeh, maybe 120
Definitely yeah, i would say 110 personally, since its the speed of Ogerpon, Iron Moth, the Latis, and MegaDiancie - then the real speed demons lie just past that, with Val at 116, Moon and Ace at 119, Sneasler at 120, and Gren/Meow/TornT/Noivern/Boulder/Weavile just past the 120 barrier
There’s a reason Walking Wake feels almost slow at 109 outside of SunBooster
@@jacksonbranby nah, if 110 was good enough then gengar would have a niche in OU.
100 was what 110 was what was what 120 was what 135 is now
@@michaelkarim57 you are a lying dog faced pony soldier.
Something left unexamined is the impact this power creep can have on the options you have to play with. New strong pokemon can be interesting, but it's more interesting when it increases the options you have rather reducing them by overshadowing them.
I would imagine it's very hard to actively achieve that. You can aim for it of course but I find with most game balancing, something will just about beat out something else. I do agree though, having more good options rather than strictly better options is a great way to go about balancing.
True, the intention should be to increase the number of viable options, not saturate the viable options to only the few strongest Pokémon
The fact that moves get better on average is mostly because GameFreak doesn’t introduce as many wide spread new moves anymore and new moves are usually Signature Moves who are meant to be stronger and special.
Also Power Creep did Scorvillain dirty. Poor fella couldn’t even hold his unique type combo for one generation…
Scovillain would have been a terrible pokemon even in gen 3. its frail and slow so that it can hit hard with its choice of physical or special moves.
its actually Meowscarada, Skeledirge, Quaquaval, and Toedscruel that are balanced powercreep mons in gen 9, as none of them were designed to invalidate all prior starters, or in the case of Toedscruel, intentionally kept from exploiting Spore naturally
@ I meant that Scorvillain was a victim of Power Creep. He has that cool unique Fire/Grass-Typing that maybe could have given him some relevance and immediately lost it to Ogerpon when the DLC came out.
@@T.W.0 I wonder if it's the other way. Did they purposefully underpower Scovillian to have it not outshine Oger-H when it was introduced later.
Mainly because it's not like they didn't start working on the Teal Mask until after the base game is done (as shown by Terapagos already being designed in order to be hinted in the book)
Game Freak also runs into/creates the issue of needing to balance pokemon both being a competitive game, as well as a single player game. So they make mons that are "meant" to only be used in the midgame, with better options in late game that you are mechanically incentivised to replace them with. The classic 2 stages that have only "ok" BSTs.
@@GKplus8 That‘s even worse… but it makes the most sense. Why Gamefreak? WHY?
It helps that newer moves are clearly designed to be competitive, a lot less basically worthless stinkers nowadays.
I like to use Bide as the example. It's shocking Bide stuck around as long as it did.
But Bide is also the perfect use case for how buffing older, less reliable moves could make them have a use case. Imagine if Bide had like 250% the damage. So a bulky defensive pokemon using Bide effectively makes it a Reverse taunt. DONT use attacking moves or you'll have the Bide n' Blast blow you up when it goes off.
Yes, that was intentional. But it also (I think) excellently demonstrates that older moves that just don't get used can be made viable through increasing their power or effectiveness.
You made some good points, and I liked the graphs. But, saying that releasing average strength Pokemon is bad marketing is a very weak argument. I don't think anyone has bought a Pokemon game because they heard the new legendary is OP. Casuals buy the games because they love Pokemon, and competitors buy the games because tournaments are held in the newest game. The relative strength of the new Pokemon is irrelevant to sales imo.
I agree
Casuals aren’t mindless drones that just buy Pokémon game because of cool animals. If ever noticed the most used Pokemon in a play through, you’ll see they use good competitive Pokemon too. In Gen 4 Lucario, Staraptor, Garchomp, and Infernape are all popular casually and all insanely good in Gen 4 competitive.
@@GrandHacstarter, gift- and early route Pokémon are understandable to stick with. Garchomp is one you have to go out of your way to get, though, I will give you that.
@@GrandHac Casuals buy them cause "it's the new Pokemon game"
These games sell millions of copies in their first few days, there are no thoughts about a meta in there
Strong Pokemon get popular cause they help people through the game, but at that point they already bought it
@@GrandHac Nah, if casuals weren't mindless drones, then the buggy messes known as Sword & Shield and Scarlet & Violet wouldn't have sold so well.
I honestly think ability‘s are the biggest factor in power creep. Yes, stats are getting more min maxed and moves are becoming more generally powerful but with these things you can only push the numbers so far. Ability‘s basically let you say „I want this pokemon to whatever I want“ and that’s kind of what they’ve been doing. People talk about Mewtwo having below average typing and stats for a modern restricted and that’s true but it also has… pressure. For a nother example look at how much worse Zacian got upon having it’s ability nerved. The -20 attack isn’t what did it in, it’s the fact intrepid sword is only once per battle. Ability‘s are becoming more and more important and yes, more creative too. If you wanted to buff old pokemon better ability‘s wouldn’t be the only thing many of them need but it would be a very good starting point.
That's a good point, like how Torkoal and Peppiler got a massive buff by getting weather setting abilites.
Good point!
For real on the Mewtwo part, it is completely outclassed in basically every way by caly shadow. It just has slightly better bulk and way better coverage. Give it neuroforce to make use of that coverage and give the ability a home now that there's no ultra necrozma, and buff psystrike to 120 BP while you're at it. Then it might see a little play
In Gen 1, Mewtwo's typing was very good, and it's 154 Special essentially gave it a base stat total of 744 if you treated it as having 154 Special Defense.
Mewtwo doesn't even have bad stats for a restricted mon. 130 base Speed is notably less than 135 base Speed (So less than Koraidon, Miraidon, and Flutter Mane), but it still comfortably clears a bunch of relevent mons like Urshifu, Ogerpon, and Chi-Yu. Its bulk isn't that bad thanks to its above average 106 base HP, and it still holds the top 6 spot on the list of current gen mons with the highest Sp. Atk (even reaching top 3 if you filter out any sub-100 base Speed mons).
If we're looking at purely stats, then Ho-oh, Lugia, Kyogre, Groudon, and Rayquaza _all_ have far worse stat distribution. But the thing is, those mons do have _way_ better Abilities. Give Mewtwo a Psychic boosting weather or Psychic Surge and it would cook. Give Mewtwo a weather or terrain nullifying Ability and it would cook. Give Mewtwo Multiscale and it would cook. But Pressure and Unnerve... give those Abilities to Koraidon/Miraidon and watch them fall to B- tier viability in all restricted formats.
I don't like when old Pokémon get completely outclassed by power creep. It feels unnecessary.
Arcanine was completely replaced by Incineroar. It's sad the cat is just better in every aspect than the dog.
If older Pokemon weren’t ever outclassed, we’d still be seeing Tauros almost 30 years later, it’d get boring pretty quickly
@@QuizzicalQuaquaval 4 more years of urshifu baby wooooooooo
@@jinnizi @QuizzicalQuaquaval see that's the thing. both of you have a point. game freak needs to find a balance between making the competitive scene boring by keeping all the old mons just as relevant as the new ones and designing broken mons that will ALWAYS be relevant. its very easy to find examples of the latter (urshifu in doubles, kingambit in singles) but a good example of the former would prolly be gen 6 (both formats). literally none of the new gen 6 mons were that good, probably bc of the megas.
@@QuizzicalQuaquaval Do you mean just seeing touros in battle?
I personally think small buffs to older pokemon over time could help combat power creep. An example of this is Electrode getting 10 extra speed points in Gen 7
New signature moves seems like the best choice, chilly reception in SV has done wonders for Slowking as it give pivot and weather setting without changing anything about Slowking itself. Giving Internage a fire type Mach punch for itself to give a unique role with fire priority, or giving Magcargo a version of sunny day that also as a protect move could bring new light to a lot of older gen mon.
I really liked Gallade getting Sharpness, Empoleon getting Competitive, and Shiftry getting Wind Rider
Honestly, my only gripe with power creep is how it makes some Pokemon “old Pokemon but better”
But if power creep has to exist then there are two things that I want to see continue or see more of
1. Make sure some of the Pokemon in a generation are intentionally bad, have their appeal be their design or a niche combination of type, ability, and move pool
2. Buff older Pokemon with new moves, abilities, and possibly increased BST to make sure they don’t just become weaker versions of new Pokemon
Also I think keeping most of the power creep to legendaries, mythicals, and other group categories (Ultra Beasts and Paradox Pokemon) is a good idea, one reason being that it creates a divide for players who don’t want to mess with power creep and another reason being that the real world isn’t all “Canada has stronger animals because it was founded after America”
Actually, I have noticed that a generation's lows are getting worse.
VGC Reg H perfectly proves your last point, as banning all the legendaries/mythicals/paradoxes really allows for a more diverse competitive scene that isn't filled with the same few mons like it was in Reg G
@ love to hear it
@@GeorgeDCowley they gave us spidops, one of the worst mons in ages, I'll give them that
1. have you seen agent spidops
2. contentious, but would Ursaluna and other cross-gen evolutions count as buffs?
There’s only one Pokémon I think is completely egregious: Urshifu. Because it fundamentally breaks the way competitive is played.
Agreed, hate that thing
Absolutely deserves to be nerfed into the ground harder than Bravest Bird was imo
Somehow, I never see it in singles...
Then there is arceus the most balanced,
no difference between attacking and defending stats
No stat over 140
No Broken ability that destroys part of the game like ignoring status
And also needs to hold an item to change forms
Perfectly balanced, as all things should be
Mind you that in gen 4 120 in all stats was so broken it got banned from ubers
I just wish that old Pokemon would get incremental buffs to keep them relevant. Like if Garchomp ever became bad, they’d give it Dragon Dance.
Edit: also Gyarados needs a better movepool now, holy balls. Give that guy Brave Bird, Roost, and Wave Crash ffs, all its attacks have such low base power.
This sentence would have seemed absurd 12 years ago
I think garchomp is kind of a poor example, cause garchomp is still highly used in vgc. Something like lucario. It got power crept by a lot of better fighting types and is basically never used in vgc. It def needs some changed to make it viable.
I wonder how much it would really change things. They gave Tyranitar knock off which would’ve been absurd in like Gen 6 and 7 but didn’t really help him
@hunterkinsella5303 it should have better defense, the steel typing doesn't feel like it's enough to cover for lucarios terrible defense
Or give it adaptability as it's hidden ability instead of locking it to it's mega evolution, at least it'll make up for it being really frail
@@hunterkinsella5303 that’s why I said “if Garchomp ever becomes bad.” I’m aware that it’s still a very good Pokemon.
Power creep doesn't have to be as intense as it has been in the past couple of generations.
Incremental power creep is good enough and does the job. Otherwise, we would end up like Yu-Gi-Oh. And Yugioh is insane, as a yugioh player.
I don't know anything about Yu-Gi-Oh, but I would agree that it has been done the most intensely in the last couple of generations.
We absolutely do not need power creep to push sales, lets be extremely real here. TPC could release Pokemon Trash and Pokemon Garbage with absolutely not a single Pokemon stronger than the previous gens, but if there are good or charming pokemon designs in it, people would buy them in droves. Remember: The games dont drive up profits for TPC, its merchandise.
Honestly my problem is not with the new Pokémon with minmaxed stats and ridiculous abilities. It's with the broken new moves that older mons don't get access to.
Fishious Rend, Rage Fist, Last Respects, Population Bomb, Lumina Crash, Jet Punch, Ivy Cudgel, Wicked Blow and Surging Strikes are crimes against humanity and throw any semblance of balance out the window.
You would think Pokémon like Seaking, known for spamming Horn Drill, would get Fishious Rend, which is effectively an OHKO move. Even thematically, it does not make sense.
@@iantaakalla8180that’s because Fishious Rend is technically an inaccurate translation. The move is called “Gill Bite” in Japan, and Seaking doesn’t really bite with its gills
Technically there’s potential Last Respects does get added to older Pokémon as it technically isn’t a signature move.
Houndstone and Basculegion get it, and yeah that’s not really saying much as they’re both effectively Gen 9 Pokémon, I think it’s likely it will be retro-actively given to older Pokémon in Gen 10. The only criteria it seems to have is that it needs to be on a Pokémon with a connection to souls that isn’t malicious, so I can see it being given to Pokémon like Dusknoir and whatnot.
@@browserjunior4707 Then give Fishious Rend to Sharpedo and watch it become instantly overpowered because of Speed Boost + Fishious Rend
@@browserjunior4707 Spiritomb should be one of the mons getting Last Respects
To be honest, I actually think it would be great to see more early game moves introduced. A lot of Pokémon don't have an early game move in their move pool that matches their stab types and their stronger attacking Stat. For example, Tinkatink has to rely on fairy wind and draining kiss until it gets play rough as a Tinkaton. I think introducing more early game moves of different attacking stats would make certain Pokémon a lot more bearable to use early game
Fair enough
6:25 "They can't just change these stats completely." Sure they can, they just choose not to. They've done so in the past, but it's only really been minor buffs to certain Pokemon's stats, and even then they usually underperformed after the buffs. Gamefreak just refuses to go whole-hog and give Pokemon that are never used a stat rework. Even the miniscule stat buffs that were given to certain Pokemon over the generations caused them to gain some traction since they were better than before, even if not by much. Imagine if they gave some select Pokemon entire stat reworks to account for the Physical/Special split? And no, I don't mean like Mega evolutions. Gamefreak are just too cowardly to try it, and it's always kinda ticked me off when people defend it as "they can't".
A great video regardless, but I didn't really like that point. Pretty much everything else has no holes.
Fair enough, it is definitely less that they can't do it and more that they won't do it. Whatever their reason though, it still doesn't change the fact that older Pokémon will not have their stats completely changed to account for the physical/special split.
I'd even add that with them constantly pushing Gen 1, it's rather strange they haven't done so yet.
@@x_bell1142 Indeed. I understood your general point, but dang it if I don't have a little hope that they might do a stat rework for some mons some day!
@@sammorin254 Exactly! I still have enjoyment for some Generation 1 mons, and they just keep bringing them back so... why not make em' viable?
saying that gholdengo is balanced is a controversial opinion.
while this pokemon wasn't banned in smogon some players considered it ban worthy.
in the past generations defog was the most reliable way to remove hazards, the only counterplay was to taunt the defoger.
now gholdengo blocks this move thanks to its ability while also blocking rapid spin and the newly introduced mortal spin.
it is not by any means a "broken" pokemon ,but you can say it is slightly unbalanced.
it may have been tough to counter in early S/V but calling it unbalanced is just an outdated opinion
It was banned for a bit.
@@GeorgeDCowley are you talking about doubles?
it wasn't banned in singles.
Tbh Gholdengo is definitely not unbalanced especially not in the current Post Dlc2 metagame. You could argue it was maybe a bit overbearing in early S/V and Dlc1 OU but rn its completely fine. Imo Gholdengo is a lot like Lando-T where its really good in doing what it does resulting in it having a very high usage but not to the point where it can't be countered
I’m just salty that they decided that THIS was the gen they were going to pull back on the base stats of bugs. Lokix deserves better. It’s amazing what they can do despite their relatively low BST, but it definitely still holds them back
It wasn't even the first time they did 'em dirty, remember kricketune being given a lower base stat total than butterfree and friggin' ledian? And then having stealth rock introduced to give them all basically zero chance of switching in?
Wish Mismagius would have gotten Fairy Ghost too
Fairy Ghost + Levitate would make it immune to 5 types
4 types
Another banger vid, identifies the idea very clearly, clarifies stance, and then intelligently outlines outliers. You make some of my favorite content, I love your vids
Thanks!
Dude, you got to be one of the best competitive pokémon related UA-camrs coming your voice isn't annoying you can actually keep me hooked on the topic for a while, good job bro you earned yourself a sub
Thanks!
9:43 unrelated but using the infamous 1904 St. Louis olympic marathon as an example of power creep in irl sports cracks me up
Watch the Ted Talk
@x_bell1142 Secret Base had a lot of fun with the topic, I highly recommend them as well
power creep is not inherently a bad thing, i just think we’re straying towards unhealthy forms of power creep as opposed to healthy. i still cant believe unseen fist and flower trick are real moves
This was probably your most engaging and well thought out video.
Thanks! I definitely put a lot of time and effort into it
Hands down one of the best up and coming poke tubers. I always learn something new from your videos, and as a longtime Pokemon fan, I really appreciate all the work that goes into to making your videos. Keep up the great work!
Thanks!
Fluttermane is what mismagius could of been. I do hope they decide to buff older pokemon by giving them stat increases, new abilities, and moves like they did with empoleon, torterra, dugtrio and swellow.
I hope so too
Huge baseball fan here, I definitely agree Babe Ruth would get smoked in today’s MLB. Average fastball speed in the 1920’s was about 85-90 mph, and now you have pitchers tossing 90 mph sliders…
True
13:51 Agree to disagree, have you seen Gholdengo in singles? Well, you should look for yourself
100% agree that is NOT a good case at all
I do not play singles, but Jimothy Cool, a UA-camr that does a lot of singles content, has actually made a video on this exact thing. I recommend you check it out:
ua-cam.com/video/jby5hr7oe_Q/v-deo.htmlsi=QRHtEaAfG3eJ0sLs
Great video man! I'm not an expert in competitive Pokémon and seeing your videos is great to learn some stuff
Thanks!
It would have been nice to use a box and whisker graph instead of a bar chart to get a better indication of the attribute spread per generation. The upper bounds of a generation is probably more indicative of power creep than the average
Gotta hard agree with Ogerpon being a well done version of power creep. It's role compression is also next level with follow me and different forms, but still feels fair.
Love the sports comparison even though I do not follow sports much it makes sense!
Dude, of all the Pokemon games I ever bought, never did I once buy a game with the intention of hoping to find stronger Pokémon than the last game. Different Pokémon sure. But I never picked up a game simply because I thought the Legendary Pokémon marketed on the game case were strong and would give me some sort of advantage in battle. It took me up until black and white before Some guy even introduced me to the concept of Competitive battles, IVs/EVs and everything that goes with it. Hell, despite hearing about events back in like 07, I didn’t even know how they worked. That’s how casual I was, and I would bet money that’s how casual most Pokémon fans are.
I owned *10 different Pokémon games* before I even had a passing thought about the viability of any given Pokémon from a competitive level.
The whole bit about needing to market these new Pokémon as strong, purely for the sake of making the purchase of them seem worth a damn, sounds incorrect. Or at least strong in the competitive sense, because I don’t think I’ve ever heard Game Freak market a Pokémon with something like “This new Pokémon is sure to be top three in Ubers this year! This Pokémon is a top tier Sweeper!” or even “This Pokémon will let you win against your friends every single time!”. Casuals might not even have a clue what you’re talking about if you said anything related to the competitive side of battling.
Overall this particular point in this video does not seem like a reasonable case for Power Creep.
k
Powercreep in Chess is pretty crazy tbh. An 11 year old now could probably beat a Grandmaster in the 1920s just because of how much Chess computers have advanced and the amount of techniques that we can learn from them
True, good point
ooh damn banger vid, keep up the good work
some good insight here. especially when covering why there are so many mixed attackers in early generations
Thanks
Don't get me wrong, you are overall right.I think about this for almost anything. They have to give a reason for you to come back/get the new thing/etc. etc...
Always gotta keep them interested and "1-up" yourself.
BUT. Notice how the points going against power creep were longer than the small portion of it at the end lol.
5:34
We need a weak physical fairy move.
We just need more physical fairy moves in general
Shohei really is the ultimate example of power creep
True
You make a good case. Thank you for the video!
Thanks!
Im against all power creep and think they should min max a bit early gen mons, and give the starter mons of the first gens unique moves
Personally I don't think power creep is bad per se, but it requires to be balanced.
If a Pokémon that is very strong is introduced, then previous Pokémon must receive buffs that are of a similar power level to that new Pokémon.
I personally think that Game Freak is a coward for refusing to do large changes. Pokémon like Altaria and Absol should've been part-Fairy, but Game Freak refuses to give them that because it fears change. Pokémon like Zangoose should've been much faster, but Game Freak refuses to give them that. Swampert should've had Regenerator, but Game Freak refuses to give it that. Iron Fist should've boosted Punch-based Moves by 1.5x, and Close Combat should be classified as a Punch-based Move. The type chart should be completely overhauled.
Old Pokémon should receive generational buffs, and what Game Freak is currently doing is not nearly enough.
Smogon should also create much more tiers, like the Pokémon Perfect system.
True, really good points you made
What is the pokemon perfect system?
@@lordmew5
A system of Pokémon tiering in which tiers continue to be made until every Pokémon, Form, and pre-Evolution has a tier in which it is competitively-viable. The tiers are also named after numbers, for simplicity's sake. For example, ZU is made into a tier. Then 7U, 8U, 9U, and so on are made into tiers, until every Pokémon -- even the likes of Feebas -- are given a viable tier. Of course, some of this could also be substituted with the addition of more tiers to NFE and LC, but that is the general idea.
@Au_Solar_Eclipse_Au yea, I just read that, guys' entire rule explanation, and it's the greatest thing I've ever read by a pokemon player. The only real issue i had was that he didn't go far enough to get rid of the sleep clause entirely.
The information and examples in this video is/are 🔥
Thanks!
it would honestly be hype af if they went out of their way to do some min max rebalancing to mons prior to gen 3 and also introduce some new abilities to them
It seems that Game Freak will only do that if it's for a generational gimmick, like how crazy min-maxed Mega Beedrill's stats were, but it seems that they refuse to do a complete overhaul for the base Pokémon.
I’d argue a lot of Gen 3 mons also severely need to be rebalanced. For some reason Game Freak absolutely loved making slow frail mixed attackers in the GBA era, the vast majority of which have aged like milk even discounting Powercreep.
5:21 pokemon inflation is good 🤨
Oh yeah I'm definitely on board with gen 10 introducing a fighting/fairy urshifu variant with unblockable, guaranteed, hit 100% crit fairy move with a bunch of returning mons from gens 1-8 that only youtubers will use on ladder for their thumbnails now. i honestly never thought it of it THAT way before😲😲
Power creep has been getting egregious since gen 4 and its only getting worse
i really don't know much about pokemon, nothing about their stats, but i love your videos and find them oddly relaxing
Thanks!
i completely agree with this take. i think comparing power creep to inflation, and giving real life examples made the point clearer. a wise decision.
overall, no notes. just commenting for the algorithm, lol
Thanks
One concept that I appreciate in relation to power creep is complexity creep whereby new pokemon aren't necessarily stronger through pure stats/moves/abilities but rather encourage creative use of their strengths and efforts to dimish weaknesses. The two that come to mind are perish trap teams and Weezing's neutralizing gas ability. These teams can be very strong, but notably require players to think about the game on different axes and adapt to uncommon situations. This is the kind of power creep I really like, and seems to be encouraged in rulesets like Regulation H.
I could definitely get on board with that - instead of just straight up making newer Pokémon stronger, make their uses more different to encourage more creative use.
love ur vids at work
Thanks
Love the vid!
Thanks!
"Here are some examples of good power creep ... Zamazenta"
Meanwhile Zacian: Sweats profusely
Power creep is most definately inevitable it's just that it's so sad to see pokemon that used to be absolute powerhouses like tyranitar, garchomp, rotom, latios, etc... become completely unused because they can't keep up anymore. It makes me think that we're moving too fast already
I definitely think it's a complex issue and not the most fun solution to the problem, but ultimately the right decision to make
The graphs in the beginning are really visually misleading. None of them originate at 0, instead starting at much higher numbers, making them appear proportionally more disparate than they actually are. For instance, the average BST graph goes from 370 to 470. The average BST in generation 1 was 427, while the average BST in generation 9 is 463; generation 9's average is only 8.4% higher than generation 1's. However, because of the graph layout, generation 9's average appears to be over 60% higher than generation 1's. While I don't think this was intentional, it does make the disparity between generations appear far more dramatic than intended, and even though the actual numbers shown are all correct, the visual layout could give the wrong impression to viewers not paying close attention.
Great video though! I've always been a little upset by how people respond to powercreep. It's always sad when our faves aren't as good as they used to be, but if newer Pokemon weren't a little bit stronger or more unique, we'd end up with several generations where the competitive scene feels fairly samey. As an aside, I think your explanation there is also one of the reasons why Dexit was doomed to happen. There's only so much powercreep that can be done without making Pokemon totally ridiculous, and at some point in order to keep that variety, they need to cut out some Pokemon so that newer ones don't need to be totally broken to stand out. Obviously there's other reasons for Dexit, most of them being relevant for the casual scene, but it definitely helps keep the generations healthy and free of bloat.
This was intentional because that's the goal of a bar graph. If I had all the graphs start at zero, the difference would look completely negligible which is not the point that I'm trying to get across. Some other commenters suggested doing a box and whisker plot for each generation instead, which I do think would have been better than a bar graph now that I look back at it.
Bro understands sports and economics too!? I underestimated your game, sir,
Thanks
Completely agreed. I haven't played past Gen 5 but I still loosely follow the franchise, I am all for power creep because I know how often people will just stick with what's good. But at the same time I will be the first to call out the egregious examples.
I can't tell you how angry I was when I learned that Fairy type, the type that was added to optimize the type chart RESISTED my beloved Bug type... -_- Because bug really didn't (doesn't) need a buff...... riiiiight.
True, Bug didn't deserve that
The Goat is back
I don't think the "good" cases of power creep you mentioned can even be considered that. In fact power creep itself absolutely ruins older pokemon that havent been touched making them irrelevant and a throw pick in most circumstances. Pokemon has to be one of the worst cases of power creep in any video game the past 3 generations because of the amount of new abilities, moves, and insanely distributed stats. It's different from a meta changing or one pokemon being slightly better than another from a previous generation. There is a clear 100% better pokemon to use over an old one since the past 3 generations. They either need to revist older pokemon and make them more viable/redistribute their stats, or not make completely broken ones that you are forced to use if you want to win like fluttermane or goldengo.
What would be some good examples of power creep then? Or are you arguing that there are no good examples of power creep at all?
Honestly, i think the better answer is just to actually do the dex cuts and make geographical region power. For example, kanto hoenn johto and sinnoh could be 1 big region that has one unified dex and government. These mons and any games that take place will have one general power level range. You can even give them split evolutions for different regions like vulpix in the galar region evolve into a different mon or have a different, longer evolutionary line due to the stronger power level.
I think it's funny how most of the bad power creeps are done by legendaries/mythical/paradox, since they are kinda supposed to be stronger than the average Pokémon. Maybe they were balanced around their limited accessibility on the main campaign and not around their competitive prowess? Idk
Makes sense
You typically can’t catch a legendary until you have six badges.
An informative video as always. Btw imagine if we get a special version of Unseen fist in the future
I don't want to imagine
@@x_bell1142 haha
Powercreep is good for the game and everyone thinking otherwise is wrong or just jumping on a bandwagon
Your point about move power is awful. Of course they're not adding Pound 3, or Cut 2, or Wing Attack 2. 40-80 power moves with marginal secondary effects are just meant to be replaced as you level up. Weak moves are meant to be for the early game single player, and no way supposed to be an option for team building.
k
I agree with most of the points you made, but why is it they can't just change an old pokemon stat distribution to make it more well balanced? I don't see how it affects the game negatively
I guess it's less that they can't do it and more that they won't do it. Game Freak will only ever add like 10, maybe 20 stat points to a Pokémon between generations, never a complete overhaul of stats.
Great video, but the only gripe I have is that the graphs never started at 0. This made a gap of what should be roughly 15% look like one was more than double the other (the gap between 412 and 463 in the average base stat total).
That's kind of the whole point of bar graphs though. If I were to have them them all start at 0, the changes would seem completely negligible. I messed around a lot with the intervals I used, I didn't just use the default ones from excel, to show that the changes are notable without exaggerating them too much.
You are right, this is standard practice in the industry in general, is taught in gamedev schools and, as you pointed in the video, is reflected in many other things like sports and economy
Nice video
Game is almost 30 years old and we just started talking power creep recently
Literally not even true, in the current format, electabuzz, magmar, clefairy, and more that I'm probs not remembering are top
Hey here’s me leaving a nice comment. Great video 👍
Thanks
There is no case. It's just bad game design.
BRANCH POKE MENTIONED LETSS GOOOO
Let's gooooo
The base stats at the start are not that useful because each generation has a different amount of strong pokemon. It's possible that the general power level didn't go up, we just got gradually more disproportionately strong pokemon.
The base stats alone aren't supposed to be a tell-all sign of the power level of each generation, it is just one of the many things to look at when talking about power creep.
Plus the dexes have gradually gotten smaller which will affect the computed average compared to older gens
I don't mind powecreep, because it makes the OLDER pokemon that are still good today even more incredible, even if they are mostly niches
Great video! Love it! I think that game freak should nerf urshifu and calyrex
@@vojtech_ledvinka but who will dominate AG now ?
@krabsolfurretisme In my opinion, a nerf like Zacian is too much, in my opinion it should only be a smaller nerf, such as a smaller BP of signature move and maybe 165 atk/sp. reduce atk to 150
if it wasn't for the fluctuating punctuation, i'd have thought this was a bot 😭 apologies but i had to get that out there
Nerf and Ban them. I don’t want to see that stupid tumor brain rabbit on a horse ever again
I feel like the main driving factor in power creep is they design pokemon with less inherent flaws. Look at Weavile where he's incredibly strong and fast but riddled fundamentally with flaws. But that was the point, you had to earn the value from that mon. Now with a mon like Gholdengo where while there are some flaws they are much easier to mitigate while also having super high highs as well. Or better would be Chein Pao who is Weavile but just with the needle much much sharper into the value that weavile achieves. It's the same design but now he has to get so much more out of it if he's going to have those flaws
Good point!
Nice. Good video
To counter the min maxxing there should be a move/item/ability that forces an attacker to use their weaker offensive stat. Adds some incentive to keep mixed attackers around.
True, that could be cool
7, 8 and 9 are special cases because they have had either a new group of their Pokemon at basically legendary levels in the plot, or had DLC, which of course focusses on a legendary, or both.
That doesn't change the fact that they are still there and are available to use, for the most part, in competitive battling
Power creep isn’t coherent when applied to Pokemon. You have pretty clear examples of Pokemon like Clefable, Dragonite, and Moltres that have fluctuated in their viability throughout the years. Probably one of the least understood and most poorly applied pop game theory terms ever.
All 4 of the "good power creep" mons I think are examples of how ridiculous it's become. Zamazenta's speed is way too high, but it's a legendary so we can allow it.
Rillaboom just took Bulu, who was already good, and got buffed in basically every way needed with it's move pool making it superb for doubles, and then the nonsense of grassy glide.
Ogerpon overall I think is healthy until Tera is mentioned, although having a redirector who is that effective offensively feels a little iffy.
Gholdengo in doubles feels somewhat ok. In singles, it's presence basically makes boots mandatory for a lot of mons.
I think another way of viewing it is how few outright bad Pokémon we're getting, which I feel is a benefit of power creep, but it raises the floor so the ceiling can be so much higher
I agree
The ceiling for what is useable or good got raised way too high
I hope we get mega babe ruth in legends za, he could use the buff.
True, he needs it
I really liked that almost every gen 9 pokemon had either a signature ability or signature move. It gave all of them a distinct personality in having that one thing that no one else could do.
Especially when they are not all that powerful. Like look at Dudunsparce with a 100 base power, 100% accurate move that hits through protect, and no one uses it.
Good video. I hesitate to consider Gholdengo very balanced, but I do agree it has its shortcomings that prevent it from being on the same level as the likes of Flutter Mane and Urshifu. Probably the worst thing about Flutter is that it sort of puts other special attacking ghosts and fairies out of a job - Iron Valiant's only managed to get usage in VGC for its support movepool and Enamorus is more or less MIA (though the all-around frailty of Valiant and Enam-I is certainly part of why they struggle to see much use in VGC, not to mention Enam's AWFUL availability in-game).
I do think power creep is a good thing, when done right of course. With no power creep or new mechanics being introduced on a generational basis, I feel like generations would get too samey and the game would really stagnate after a while. Sure, Tyranitar is cool and all but do we really need it to dominate metagames generation after generation? That's not to say it and other strong Pokémon of past gens should be rendered totally worthless after a certain point (I'm a proponent of buffing old Pokémon more than nerfing newer ones), but new arrivals deserve their time in the spotlight as well and we shouldn't have too many old Pokémon take away from this if you ask me.
Maybe GF will find a better balance come gen 10, but no matter what may happen, people should accept that power creep is inevitable and that the next gen will introduce Pokémon that will most likely push older ones out of relevance, including some gen 9 mons.
Thanks! Really good points you made btw
@x_bell1142 I think I could've mentioned Spectrier in the original comment as well - it has virtually no reason to be used with Flutter around either. And thanks to you as well! I appreciate your reply and I look forward to more videos of yours :)
Dude I always knew rillaboom was the best. Any meta is worse without him very chill guy tbh
True
I agree with everything you stated in the video but also still fully support the inclusion of Pokémon such as Flutter Mane, Calyrex and Spectrier/Glastrier, Urshifu etc. because in games with content as vast as Pokémon has, I kinda feel its necessary from a "fun to play" aspect to include them!
True, I will absolutely still use these Pokémon in competitive battling because if I want to win, I'll use the strongest Pokémon
I’m actually into them not adding more bad moves. Like the weak moves they’re adding are more technical and have limited distribution. A lot of franchises will have a very limited set of basic moves that are pretty universal and then the builds get more specific at higher levels. I don’t really feel the need for 7 embers or another early game grass move.
Lets be honest, if the new games kept releasing Pokemon that were weaker than older Pokemon, people would complain about that too. I think it's also more difficult to maintain perfect balance than many people are willing to admit. Trying to create a bunch of new Pokemon, moves, abilities, and items every generation that are somehow perfectly well-balanced with all the pre-existing ones is virtually impossible.
Perfect balance is totally unfeasible, and likely not even desirable.
Sometimes it's annoying because developers will water down previously enjoyed advantages.
did you not count Mega Audino for the Gen 5 BST total?
I accounted for Mega Audino correctly - it just doesn't make a difference since it's the only mega in gen 5 and I am rounding to the nearest whole number.
I'd like to see the stats/moves/abilities of all previous generations buffed appropriately to make previous gen pokemon relevant.
Moxie Boosted has done some videos covering that!
Pokémon are outclassed by other pokémons since the beginning we're fine
Yep
Okay? Are you defending this position?
That’s *BAD.* I don’t think anyone in the competitive scene actively prefers having less viable Pokémon in any given generation. Thats the entire point of this video. Power creep, as time goes on, will only serve to make that list of unviable/outclassed pokemon longer and longer and longer, until some Pokémon that were once usable are so bad, that they’re basically completely unusable content.
You will be *forced* to use new Pokémon not out of preference, but necessity if you want to remain competitive. All of those unique Pokémon with distinguishing traits, stats, moves, abilities and playstyles, hell even just seeing those good old legacy Pokémon faces again, will simply just not be possible if you want to take it seriously.
It has always sucked, even back when there was only one generation of Pokémon, that there were completely unusable, and unviable pokemon that could never be used in any real battling capacity.
Brushing the power creep issue aside with, “There have always been outclassed pokemon”, is not a salient defense or some consolation that will magically make people open to the idea of power creep.
@@gauzzenp3583 i think its cool
@@gauzzenp3583 also sheesh
@@gauzzenp3583 sheesh
i've been thinking about min maxing recently and was wondering if rather than trying to look at each pokemon individually you look at the different roles pokemon are commonly used for in competitive singles/doubles and compare each pokemons stats to a hypothetical ideal stat distribution of their role/roles. So for example, you'd look at the role of "Physical Wall" or "Special Setup Sweeper" or "Hazard Setter" or "Support Pokemon" and figure out what an ideal stat distribution for these roles would look like (maybe there'd be some variance based on typing) and then you look at existing pokemon that fit these roles and see how well their stats (or more importantly stat distribution) compares to this ideal number (in terms of % of stats allocated, not raw numbers). I feel like this would not only help us figure out how good old vs new pokemon are and get a better sense of the level of power creep in pokemon but i also think it'd help us figure out how new pokemon (when for example gen 10 or Legends A-Z comes out) will perform and which role they might best be suited for by comparing and contrasting their numbers to these hypothetical ideals.
True, this could be very interesting and I was actually thinking of making a video covering min-maxing as a whole.
I just started so maybe you address this but I did notice gen 4 had a spike overall and then gens 7-9, another contributor is additional evolutions added later; if Pokémon are entering a new gen fully evolved without their previous evolutions to balance out the average a bit then that will inflate the numbers a bit too
Grassy glide on Rillaboom in gen 8 definitely gets into the excessive territory if you ask me.
Good thing it was nerfed
Good stuff
Thanks
Pokemon should have a mechanic that is meant to entice mixed attackers and benefit them. I think, maybe increasing the critical hit chance on moves hit in a Pokémon’s weaker defense stat and decreasing critical hits when hitting a Pokémon on the stronger defense stat is the start of an idea.
True, mixed attacking is a lost art
HELL YEAH LETS GOOO
Personally I feel like Ursaluna, both regular and blood moon are perfect embodiments of what power creep should look like. Yes they are both incredibly strong, but they have drawbacks and average enough defenses that they aren’t game warping. They also check the boxes for me, nostalgia and wicked design. More ursaluna please and thank you @GameFreak
True, I love Ursaluna
Another factor of powercreep is that it also competes with previous generations so outliers become the competitive standard.
Tyranitar is a power outlier, so the bar for very good pokemon is set to that, not the average hoenn pokemon which was outclassed even in its day.
Overtime teams need to allocate less slots to mediocre niche fillers as strong niche fillers nafurally arise simply because there are more good pokemon even if nothing ever got strictly better than tyranitar
True
0:15 I guess Deoxys Forms, too.
1:50 How are you counting power-variable moves? Wait, you said.
4:10 Clear body?
5:55 I might suggest a Tackle per type, but otherwise fair.
Clear Body also does mostly the same thing, but Full Metal Body also makes it so that it can't get ignored by things like Mold Breaker.