What are some theories, assumptions, headcanons, or general opinions about the series you've changed your mind on over time?

[Suspicious Derivative]

USUM. Just the whole damn thing. Still in absolute awe that I wrote an exhaustive, eleven page analysis mercilessly shitting on a game that I had not played a single time. And then I did and it immediately became one of my top 3 favorite videogames ever (granted I haven't played THAT many games but still).

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair. Again, I cannot stress this enough: Every single word of this was written with an Ultra Moon combined playtime of 0 hours, 0 minutes and 0 seconds, as the game would not come into my possession for over a year after publication. As the great crowbcat once so eloquently titled a video on the ouya: failure, regret, death.

That goes along with an assumption I always made in the past: when you ranted about US/UM, I thought your opinions were based on your personal experiences from playing the games. I read your posts and thought that you were entitled to your opinion, but I strongly disagreed with you. When I first read your big post about the games, I had some thoughts about replying to it and explaining why I disagreed with the vast majority of it. But I couldn't be bothered, and it felt like nothing good would come out of it, so I scrapped it and kept my thoughts to myself (though I think I wrote a positive post about US/UM in the likes thread afterwards, as a way to counter your post). I was really surprised when I read that you had not played US/UM prior to writing that big post, and all your other negative posts about them. I'm a bit curious, what do you think of S/M nowadays? Do you still like them?

While I'm here, I might as well post some short words about two other assumptions I used to make in the past. The first one is that I thought an open world Pokémon game would never work. This was because I thought the non-linear elements of the Kanto and Johto games wasn't particularly great, it was pointless at best and harmful at worst. I was worried that ScaVio wouldn't be any good either, but then I played Violet, and it proved me wrong. Open world works for Pokémon, but I think non-linearity doesn't work. Or at least not the way they handled it in Kanto and Johto.

The second assumption is that I used to believe that opponents in Battle Facilities would "cheat" or "counterteam" you. The latter was a very wide-spread rumor back in the day. In Battle Facility discussions on Serebiiforums, many users were convinced that the opponents would counterteam you, and they tried to convince others that it was the case. As for the opponents cheating, I don't think it happens either. While I have experienced many instances of unfair hax in Facility play, you just have bad luck sometimes, and losses happen. I have haxed my opponents many times as well, making it even.

 

[bdt2002]

What are some theories, assumptions, headcanons, or general opinions about the series you've changed your mind on over time?

That is indeed the title of this thread, is it not? So I just got done writing a post elsewhere in OI, and while I was doing that, something that came to mind was how the Paldea region's overworld infamously does not let the player go into buildings you'd think you would be able to because the doors are locked shut. That being said, I would like to start imagining there is a really funny reason for that, and honestly this was really clever on Game Freak's part in the off chance they were playing four-dimensional chess on purpose and that this isn't just a coincidence.

So, one year prior to Scarlet & Violet's release, we had the Sinnoh remakes come out, right? Whether or not Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl were good remakes isn't important to this. The important part is that there was a Sinnoh game just before Scarlet & Violet's release. With Sinnoh, you of course have the Champion Cynthia, famous for being one of the most popular and most difficult Champions in the series, said difficulty also being simultaneously referenced in Legends: Arceus with Volo's postgame battle. It stands to reason that if Pokémon's target audience is still for children, you'd eventually find people who played these as their first Pokémon game(s) and had similar reactions to Cynthia (and Volo I guess)'s difficulty that the DS generation did back during the late 2000s. That's great and all, but what does any of this have to do with closed doors?

To answer that, we take a look at Game Freak's philosophy of re-introducing features in later games and/or DLC that were either removed or debatably should have been in the base game. Locked doors might not seem that important at first, but I would imagine that there are enough people who tried to open some of Paldea's several locked doors to the point where having more buildings you can enter in a future installment would still be appreciated. And that's the kicker here. What region would you expect to be remade next after Sinnoh? The two most popular answers are Johto and Unova, right? Both of these regions, notably, have a lot of buildings you can enter, certainly moreso than Paldea and possibly the inevitable Generation 10 region might. But you know what else one of these regions in particular has? Oh, you know, just a hidden Cynthia cameo completely out of nowhere in some random villa in Undella Town that caught players everywhere completely off guard.

So, hear me out. What if the entire reason Paldea and possibly Generation 10 after it has so many locked doors and buildings is so Game Freak can gaslight the newer generation into appreciating having the doors unlocked to these buildings and houses in the games where that is allowed, so that way these players who did grow up with BDSP and/or Legends will be conditioned to check every single door that could open and eventually be traumatized just like what happened in the Generation 5 games for so many people?

 

[R_N]

Yeah I'm willing to bet it's...not that, actually

not that at all

 

[bdt2002]

Yeah I'm willing to bet it's...not that, actually

not that at all

Oh, I definitely agree. There's no way this was the reason. I just think it's hilarious to think about because I want to watch the world burn.

 

[Suspicious Derivative]

Been thinking about this even more, and I remembered two more things I used to believe in.

The first is this: When Pokémon XD was new, someone spread a rumor that if you had a male Pokémon with their special move and traded it to R/S/E or FR/LG, then bred it with a female of the same species/line, the babies would know the special move as an egg move. This rumor was very wide-spread on Serebiiforums in late 05/early 06, I remember several people restarting XD or playing through the game again just to catch all the Shadow Pokémon as male. Since this rumor was so wide-spread and nobody thought of actually testing it, I believed in it too. In fact, I think one of the reasons I got a second memory card for my Gamecube was just so I could catch all the Shadow Pokémon in XD as male. Pretty embarrassing now that I look back at it, but thanks to getting that second memory card, I got to play through both Colosseum and XD once more without having to delete my original save file, so it was definitely worth it in the end.

Time went on, and after a while, some people actually tested this rumor, and they found out that it didn't work. I remember that I tried it as well. I traded over my Salamence from XD (which was Male and knew Refresh) to Emerald, where I bred it with a female Salamence. Did the baby Bagon know Refresh? Nope. Because of that, I never caught all the Shadow Pokémon as male in my second playthrough of XD, I just played through it normally.

The second thing is more an assumption, it wasn't something that I ever saw or heard about, just something I personally believed in. Back when R/S were the newest games, I would often try to beat the Contests, but I would rarely succeed. I usually used members of my in-game teams, which didn't have the best movesets or the best contest condition. Since the opposing Pokémon in the contests had nicknames that were suspiciously derived from their species name, and since they pretty much always won the primary judging round, I believed that using nicknames that were related to the name of the Pokémon species would raise their condition, and therefore increase the chances of winning the primary judging! Because of that, I tried this for some of the Pokémon I used for contests. I know for sure I had a Dusclops nicknamed "DUCOS", a Tropius nicknamed "TROPIU" (these nicknames are really terrible!) and maybe even more. But I eventually realized that the nicknames had no effect on how well you did in the contests. Nobody told me, I just figured it out on my own.

 

[QuentinQuonce]

Been thinking about this even more, and I remembered two more things I used to believe in.

The first is this: When Pokémon XD was new, someone spread a rumor that if you had a male Pokémon with their special move and traded it to R/S/E or FR/LG, then bred it with a female of the same species/line, the babies would know the special move as an egg move. This rumor was very wide-spread on Serebiiforums in late 05/early 06, I remember several people restarting XD or playing through the game again just to catch all the Shadow Pokémon as male. Since this rumor was so wide-spread and nobody thought of actually testing it, I believed in it too. In fact, I think one of the reasons I got a second memory card for my Gamecube was just so I could catch all the Shadow Pokémon in XD as male. Pretty embarrassing now that I look back at it, but thanks to getting that second memory card, I got to play through both Colosseum and XD once more without having to delete my original save file, so it was definitely worth it in the end.

Time went on, and after a while, some people actually tested this rumor, and they found out that it didn't work. I remember that I tried it as well. I traded over my Salamence from XD (which was Male and knew Refresh) to Emerald, where I bred it with a female Salamence. Did the baby Bagon know Refresh? Nope. Because of that, I never caught all the Shadow Pokémon as male in my second playthrough of XD, I just played through it normally.

I wonder if this arose from a misunderstanding of the fact that Magcargo gets Heat Wave from XD - an egg move for that species, but nothing could pass it down until XD. The same is true for Tyrogue, which gets Helping Hand as an egg move from Hitmonchan - but Hitmonchan only gets Helping Hand as a purified move. Perhaps it's a distortion of this - people may have not realised that those moves were actually existing egg moves and assumed that all moves could be passed down.

The second thing is more an assumption, it wasn't something that I ever saw or heard about, just something I personally believed in. Back when R/S were the newest games, I would often try to beat the Contests, but I would rarely succeed. I usually used members of my in-game teams, which didn't have the best movesets or the best contest condition. Since the opposing Pokémon in the contests had nicknames that were suspiciously derived from their species name, and since they pretty much always won the primary judging round, I believed that using nicknames that were related to the name of the Pokémon species would raise their condition, and therefore increase the chances of winning the primary judging! Because of that, I tried this for some of the Pokémon I used for contests. I know for sure I had a Dusclops nicknamed "DUCOS", a Tropius nicknamed "TROPIU" (these nicknames are really terrible!) and maybe even more. But I eventually realized that the nicknames had no effect on how well you did in the contests. Nobody told me, I just figured it out on my own.

Oh I love some of those names. RIKELEC the Electrike, SLOKTH the Slakoth, LOUDERD the Loudred, EYESAB the Sableye, and FUTTERBE the Butterfree always stood out to me as particularly hilarious. I actually nicknamed my Aggron RONAR and my Dragonite DRITE in homage to the ones you face here, they're two of the less-stupid sounding monikers.