WolfeyVGC has pointed out that the type system right now is very unbalanced, with Steel far better than the other types. Also, a lot of the type interactions don't make much flavor sense, which makes them hard to learn and remember.
(Wolfey's ranking of types from best to worst, in Scarlet/Violet, is: 1 Steel, 2 Fire, 3 Water, 4 Fairy, 5 Ground, 6 Ghost, 7 Electric, 8 Dark, 9 Dragon, 10 Fighting, 11 Grass, 12 Ice, 13 Flying, 14 Psychic, 15 Rock, 16 Poison, 17 Normal, 18 Bug.)
The Pokemon games have somewhat backed themselves into a corner, because a lot of the type interactions were chosen 20+ years ago and can't easily be changed. If you make a ton of changes to an already-complicated system, you just create confusion and frustration.
One possible solution would be for the Pokemon games to make just a few especially-obvious changes at a time, so players have time to learn and adapt. So I would curious: if you could change just ten type relationships, which ones would you change, and why? How would you make the type interactions more flavorful, balanced, and easy to remember?
Extra credit if you remove at least as many type relationships as you add (e.g., replace "X resists Y" with "X takes normal damage from Y"), so you don't end up with a system that's even harder to remember than the current system.
My initial suggestion (criticism welcome!):
- Since Steel is the strongest type and needs some nerfs: Electric and Psychic are now super effective against Steel (think spoon bending, or using metal as a conduit for psychic energy), and Steel no longer resists or is super effective against Rock or Ice.
- Since Fire is the second-strongest type (and Ice needs some help), Fire loses its resistance to Ice. (It's not as though fiery creatures love the cold!)
- Since Bug is the weakest type: It's now resistant to Psychic and immune to Dark and Fairy, and Bug now deals normal damage to Fairy. The logic here is that bugs are pretty distantly related to lizards, mammals, birds, etc., so they're likely to have weird psychologies that are harder to influence with weird/confusion/illusion/etc. powers.
- Since Poison is another very weak type, and Ground is very strong: Poison is no longer weak to Ground. There wasn't a strong flavor reason for this interaction, and now Poison gains its own niche as a type with only one weakness: Psychic. (Which also helps Psychic regain some of its lost specialness.)
- Finally, as the element of sunlight, life, and non-animals, Grass is now immune to Ghost and super effective against Ghost. This helps give Grass its own niche against the higher-tier types.
Overall, this buffs all of the below-average types except Flying and Normal, and it nerfs some of the strongest types (Steel, Fire, Fairy, Ground, Ghost, and Dark). Though it's hard to predict exactly how the meta would stabilize here. E.g., Psychic gaining in power means that Bug, Ghost, and Dark gain ground (as counters to Psychic), which in turn makes the counters to those types (Fighting, Fairy, Flying, Rock, Fire, etc.) stronger.
My changes also add only one new type interaction where there wasn't one before (Grass-Ghost), removes two other interactions entirely (Steel-Rock and Steel-Ice), and tweaks another seven interactions that already existed (Steel-Psychic, Steel-Electric, Fire-Ice, Bug-Dark, Bug-Psychic, Bug-Fairy, and Poison-Ground). So I think the overall effect is a type system that's somewhat easier to remember, rather than harder.
by geitzeist