Card Types

Having all types would do far more harm to the game than good. Some types would show up as weaknesses/resistances much less frequently (we already see this with a couple like Dragon and Colorless), and it gives little to no opportunity for weakness diversity in types. (Think about it. If Rock/Ground got split off as a type from Fighting, all Fighting Pokemon, minus Hawlucha, would be weak to Psychic.) There's also the fact that some types are already much smaller than others, and have little going for them as a result. Fire and Lightning in particular suffer from this, especially as there are so few Pokemon of those types. The smaller types almost invariably get far, far fewer cards. (Which makes sense. Given how few Pokemon there are of those types, repeats happen a LOT. Look at how many Manectric and Talonflame cards exist.)

The type system is fine for the most part. I just want them to buff the smaller types' Pokemon pools. Maybe move some of the types around a bit. Move Ghost to Darkness for example. But there's so few logical ones to do this with. Putting Flying or Bug or something into Lightning makes no sense. I guess smaller types are doomed to mediocrity. (That being said, this is a pretty good case for why not every type is seperate in the TCG. Can you imagine how pathetic Ghost or Ice decks would be with so few Pokemon of those types?)
 
We haven't seen cards with two types of Weakness though since the original EX era up to and including Power Keepers. All of those cards are long out of rotation and all of those cards were that eras EX cards.

In this instance we're talking about everything, from Bulbasaur needing to be weak to fire/ice/flying/psychic to resisting grass/electric/water/fighting/fairy (for a total of nine icons) to Diancie being weak to water/grass/ground/steel and resisting normal/fire/flying/bug/dark.

That would bring up another point. Diancie is x2 weak to water, grass, and ground. But Diancie is actually 4xweak to steel. That makes another problem, how is that represented? Same with a lot of dragons being 4x weak to ice as opposed to being 2x weak to dragon or fairy.

Or should they be? Given how cards are currently designed where every Pokémon is only one type, should a Fairy Diancie only be weak/resist to those things that fairies are weak/resist too (poison and steel and fighting, dark and bug respectively) and ignore rock weaknesses/resistance (water, grass, fighting, ground, steel and normal/fire/flying/poison again respectively) or should it presume that it's also secretly a rock type and work those all in?

Lolz, I think these things are why they simplify as many types in tcg as possible. I bet there would be different answers to this one.
 
Something to ponder:

The TCG is based on the video games. Should there be so many Types in the video games?

Personally I think there are too many Types in the video games; they could pretty easily be simplified into any of the various "classical element" schemes, perhaps with the addition of a "neutral" slot. They also reflect a variety of traits that are not equal but are treated as such by the system. Being composed of something is the same as manipulating in it and sometimes the same as living in it. Fine distinctions are drawn between some things but not others; instead of a single "Earth" Type we've got Grass, Ground, Rock and Steel but we have Flying to represent Pokémon that fly or manipulate the air, unless that air is poisonous (in which case it is suddenly a "Poison" Type). Classical western elements like "Water" are treated the same as... what is Fighting supposed to really represent? Advanced striking techniques (as opposed to "Normal" Type attacks?) or is it meant to represent chi manipulation?

I'd rather the game simply had more detailed, game mechanic relevant character models and do away with Types, but if that seems to extreme, perhaps creating "Tiers" for the existing Types, so that they can reflect different things (so being made of X isn't the same as using X in your attacks or living in X) and then allowing Pokémon to have more Types. Not so we can have "one of everything" (though maybe appropriate for Arceus), but so that Body Composition is different from Locomotion is different from Ability/Attack Types. Or keep it as is but condense everything so that we have maybe a half-dozen Types.

Oh right, the TCG. ;)

So the TCG is bound by all of this. Gen 1 didn't have Dark, Fairy or Steel Types, hence no Darkness, Fairy or Metal-Type Pokémon. Unfortunately they decided to limit us to just seven original Types: Colorless (Dragon/Flying/Normal), Fighting (Fighting/Ground/Rock), Fire, Grass (Bug/Grass/Poison), Lightning (Electric), Psychic (Ghost/Psychic) and Water (Ice/Water). Assuming I haven't embarrassingly left one out. >_< So seven Types meant they needed seven distinct colors, and unfortunately they decided that things like Basic Energy would often incorporate multiple shades of the same color and/or shades were chosen that often were in the "middle" of the spectrum.

What this means is that now it is tricky to come up with new colors to assign the Types, making them easy to distinguish from each other. Given the skew towards the younger demographic, that is likely important. I once did a spread sheet to compare these relationships (before Fairy-Types) and to best preserve the Type relationships, I realized that no more than two video game Types should be condensed into a TCG Type. Thematically there are also a lot of pairings that while I get them not happening when the game began (because half of the Types involved didn't exist), a Dark/Poison-Type as TCG Darkness-Type or Rock/Steel as TCG Rock-Type makes more sense to me. Again though, that was before Fairy-Types.

By now, I think we need to continue transitioning until there is a 1:1 relationship between TCG and video game Types. Before worrying about complicated effects, understand I also think Weakness and Resistance as a mechanic needs revision, but even keeping it "as is", it just means simplifying the video game mechanics so that each Type has a single Weakness and Resistance associated with it.
 
Blob55 said:
But Fairy and Grass are very similar on the types which resist them front, plus a shared weakness.

Shared weakness: Poison
Shared types which resist them: Steel, Fire and Poison

As for Bug...

Shared strengths: Dark
Shared types which resist them: Steel, Fire and Poison

So since they share the same things which resist them, it makes little since for Fairy to be its own type.
Click to expand...


Uh.

Nope. Fire doesn't RESIST Fairy.

Poison and Steel are Fairy types weaknesses.
Fairy is strong against Dark, Dragon and Fighting.

Grass is Weak to Fire, Bug, Flying, Poison and Ice. Only common factor here is poison.
Grass is strong to Water, Ground, and Rock. NO common types.

While also Fairy is IMMUNE to Dragons.

These are DRASTICALLY different card types. And you have to look at the why.

BUG on the other hand makes much more sense to not have it's own type. Both grass and Bug are resisted by: Fire, Flying, Poison, and Steel.
Both are weak to: Fire and Flying.

There's more in common in bug and grass then just the 1 common in grass and fairy.


Fairy in the games is the newest type. People are most excited about it because it is immune to dragons, the formats originally strongest type. A while ago they made dragon a new type of card to mimic that, but with no NRG it wasn't really a problem. They used two NRG types to represent them as a whole.

Adding Fairy type made sense to keep the spirit of change in the TCG too. It's an exciting new type that's based around support and not full frontal assault. Which is also very NON Grass as grass is all about evolving into something stronger then before.

I feel like you just look at Floette or Flabebe and go oh it's sitting on a flower so it needs to be a grass type. The whole idea of fairies comes from the actual lore of faeries and pixies and they blend in and are whimsical and magical, that's the point. It's a new type trying to bring some thing neat and new to the table, it's a direct opposite of it's counter type Dragons and a wonderful addition to the game play.
 
I know Flabébé doesn't need to be grass type, I'm just confused as to why there's only about 7 types without their own unique energy. so far of all of the types with shared types, fighting and water are the only ones to not lose/gain a type at any point.

In Gen 4 grass lost poison
In Gen 4 psychic gained poison
In Gen 5 colorless lost dragon
In Gen 6 colourless lost a lot of normal types, when they were retconned to fairy
 
Fire, Water, Grass, Electric, dark, Fairy, Steel, Colorless, Psychic, Fighting, Dragon if you want to count it should be about 11 types.

Fairy and Dragon we good examples of "breaking out" into new types. They found a good way to do it.

It's now a matter of finding a good way to do things.

This of it this way:

The card game follows the Video Games but is not bound by them.

The card game is it's own entity, and it is massively simplified. We may never have all of the types, as well as we'll never have all 700+ pokemon in Standard play.

BUT the tcg will continue to evolve and add new things. Not everything is bound by laws.
 
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