The Question of the Day is a way to facilitate community discussion to help members ponder the unanswered questions of the world that are somehow relating to the hobby. Questionsj are many times open ended and up to interpretation. Feel free to post your thoughts in as much or as little detail as you’d like.
Helpful Considerations may or may not help some people focus their answer, these are blurred to not bother those who have their own ideas.
Today’s Question: QotD: Are there too many Pokemon?
Helpful considerations: should they slow down or stop with the introduction of new generations? Is it better to release only regional forms or variations of already existing ones? This is a suggested question.
No. We need more. We are just getting started. Endless possibilities. Thats what I would like to see happen. How many species of unknown living organisms are there?
Well, there are too many pokemon with terrible designs, and there are too many pokemon with good designs that are terrible. So they could polish up the latter, they could do new gimmicks that doesn’t suck like the megas, they have a practically infinite supply of “new” pokemon in regional forms, paradox, dna splicer, reworked stats, eviolite, whatever. They could restructure things so that Pokemon of different stages can fight against each other a là the anime (i.e pumped Nidorino is as strong as Garchomp, igloo Sandshrew can fuck with Tyranitar etc.)
Of course, none of this is going to happen, because they’ve shown us the direction they want to go in. Fifa starters, more cuties, more furries, more dog bread, more Maushold, more meme references and more Spongebob Starmie. It’s more of a quality problem than a quantity problem. We keep piling up terrible Pokemon that are not only causing problems in their respective gens, but will keep causing problems in future gens.
There should be more! Each gen should be mostly new with older “national dex” unlocked in the post game. That should guarantee at least a handful of good designs each time
There arent enough imo. The new pokemon are what makes the new games and cards fun. People are allergic to new pokemon and usually they dont even play the games. Charizard will always be there as will the other 150 gen wun pokemon. Cant live in 1999 forever!
TL;DR: No, they should continue with a new gen every ~3 years.
I feel like there are a lot of different aspects for this question, and the answer differs depending on how you look at it.
Considering we have a new gen every three years on average, I feel like we should keep that pace regarding new gens with new Pokémon. So in terms of consistency; not stagnating over time; and more fun for both existing and new collectors, the answer would be no, there should be more Pokémon in roughly the same pace.
In terms of sets, some Pokémon are almost ignored when it comes to TCG releases. I feel like TPC does a slightly better job these days, since we’ve finally seen some new cards of Mantyke, Bonsly, Pichu, Archen, Archeops, etc. during the SV era, but at the same time popular Pokémon like Pikachu, Charizard, Eeveelutions, etc. are printed in the hundreds each year across the active languages. In this regard, I’d say the answer would be a maybe. The more Pokémon there are, the less frequently they would be added to new sets. But imo, the main issue in this regard is that all existing Pokémon aren’t occurring in the same frequently to begin with in sets..
In terms of TPC’s coming up with new Pokémon: the more there already are, the harder it is to come up with new/original Pokémon concepts. Then again, after I’ve subscribed to some Fakemon designers on YouTube (e.g. Truegreen7), I feel like there are still hundreds of cool/unique Pokémon designs that could be added. And after some very lazy designs in gen 9 (Pawmi evo line; Tandemaus evo line; Finizen evo line; etc.), I hope to see something better in gen 10+.. So in this regard I’d also say a maybe.
In terms of the games, the amount of Pokémon that can be found in the game environment itself (so without putting them into your personal game through previous games) isn’t too limited. In most of the games, the List of regional Pokédexes gives a pretty variable amount depending on the game. Some games have ~150 Pokémon; some have ~300; some have ~400; etc. I guess it all depends on how much effort the developers wants to put into which Pokémon can be found where on the map, but software overall is a lot more flexible than physical sets in that regard. So I’ll also say a maybe for this one, although borderline no.
In general though, I personally like the one new gen with ~75-150 Pokémon every ~3 years, and I feel like it should continue like this. It’s exciting for kids growing up with Pokémon; it’s fun to discuss them among us here, even if you primarily only care about gens 1-3 in general, whether you’re a new collector or have been collecting for years. And without new Pokémon once in a while, I feel like things with stagnate, which would only be a disadvantage in a hobby like this.
I’d say yes, there are too many. Personally, I would have stopped around Gen 6, limiting myself to only sporadic, well designed releases.
I was thinking about the first three generations, and how iconic they still are: is it only nostalgia, or the fact that we had less TCG sets, a slower pace in general, a smaller selection of Pokemon to choose from, and also the idea of being everyone on the same board when it came to pokedex knowledge, played a role?
I don’t think it will be smart (in the long run) to have an endless row of barely recognizable Pokemon. There’s little benefit (in my opinion!) in producing a pokedex for each country in the world, which actually weakens the in-game lore/logic and leads to those cringy, forced references like Pokemon playing soccer or cosplaying as olive oil bottles.
People just don’t have time to digest and get attached to so many creatures, when it obviously gets incredibly harder for them to pull off something fresh and memorable.
I don’t think it’s feasible considering how their business works, but I would have loved a franchise that grew up with its audience and tried to make better use of their existing characters (new stories in Kanto, games inspired by Holon’s lore, maybe some involving new regional forms or mutations..). That would ultimately free them from the endless spiral of releasing gen after gen.
Nahh.. I feel we need more and more pokemon but the thing is covering almost all geographical themes round the earth .
Repetition of animals on similar types could be too much. Also to not make some or the other pokemon forgettable giving them any special treatment like reg.form, gmax or mega could be cool.
Still I want more pokemon. I am greedy enough there
I think one of the reasons many people (including younger generations) prefer the first four gens of Pokemon designs is that Kanto, Johto, Hoenn and Sinnoh were based off of different regions of Japan, with many Pokemon designs being influenced by real-world creatures and youkai mythology. The creators drew more from their own experiences with nature and folklore and it really showed.
From Gen 5 onward, I felt the design ethos shifted to a lot of caricatures of foreign cultures. There are still quite a few fantastic designs here and there, but so many of these new Pokemon just feel like they were made by people with only a cursory understanding of these countries the new regions are based off of.
I think the bigger problem is that there is too much filler. This is mainly because of Gen 5 and 8, where a lot of the Pokémon just aren´t very memorable.
I wouldn´t change anything in gens 1-3 and 6, 7 and 9.
So, how long do you think it will take before a 1088-slot binder becomes too small for me? No regional variants.
Since they’ll never stop adding new content as long as it keeps making money, I think they should slow down and improve the new releases, as has already been mentioned.
Maybe generations of around 35 Pokémon, well designed and carefully thought out, all based on the same theme—whether geographic or thematic, like jungle Pokémon, fossils… mmmmmmm sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
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