If Flying was spun off into its own type, Colorless would lose its only source of weakness diversity. That is a huge deal IMO. (Incidentally, Flying provides the only weakness diversity for Darkness, Grass, Fire and Lightning also.) And unlike with a type like Water, which can have both Lightning and Grass weaknesses (and even has Ice to provide Metal weaknesses), Normal is ONLY weak to Fighting. So aside from the scarce few non-Flying Dual-type Normals, every single Colorless Pokemon would be weak to the same type. I guess it could be solved by continuing to make Colorless Normal/Flying-types, but that kind of defeats the purpose of a Flying type. (And, honestly, most non-Normal Flyings would likely continue to mostly be their primary type rather than Flying even if Flying was a type.)
The only positive I really see for this is giving Grass (one of the largest types) a major weakness diversity, since they could logically shift Bug's weakness to Flying instead of sharing a Fire one with Grass. But it's honestly in less need of it than Colorless. Fire's an inherently small type. Fighting is larger, and also hits more things for weakness than Fire does in the first place.
The proper way to make Flying more relevant would probably be to give either Flyings themselves (probably for Fighting-resistant Pokemon like they've done a couple of times in the past) or Colorless Pokemon more support, along the lines of what they've done with Dragon, which also doesn't hit anything for weakness.
Sorry for taking so long to respond to these but I wanted to respond and cover some point. I'm not sure what you mean by flying provides weakness diversity so if you will, I'd like to know more by this. While its true that Normal is only weak to Fighting but so is Electric type, which is only represented by itself. Dragon is interesting because there are cards in format that are Dragon weak. The fairy inclusion kind of ruined thing because they have no resist in game right now so Dragon doesn't hit for weakness.
Doing it this way would at least let the flying type hit for weakness and relieve the weakness of some other types who are weak to Mewtwo.
If you just have to have every type in the video games appear in the TCG, it has to be such that you have 1 to 3 types share the same energy type.
A rock, ground, and fighting type can be represented by different shades of orange and brown, or bug and grass can be represented by green and olive green or something. Nothing has changed, except for the fact that the bug and grass types look different, but still both use grass energy. Another way is to do it like metal type, and how it has the diagonal lines pattern, and make specific patterns in the green background of grass types to represent bug types.
We don't want to have a situation where there are too many types that use their own energies, but too little cards to represent them. I would also like to see some video game types moved around and grouped into different TCG types, because some TCG types that use specific energies are more represented than others. Examples of over representation would be grass psychic and fighting. Examples of under representation would be fire, lightning, darkness, metal, and fairy, which makes me believe making fairy its own type with its own energy was a mistake.
If they did represent all the VG types into the TCG, it would be weird to see a grass type have the bug, fire, poison, and flying symbols as weakness, which is probably why we only have 11 types in total.
I'm not opposed to all types being represented. Dragon type is the most irreverent type to the TCG because the ONLY things weak to Dragon in both the game and TCG are Dragons. The flying type hits 3 types for weakness, two of which can be the same type (Grass/Bug) and Fighting. This is pretty significant to defensive typing. Fairy was only created to beat Dragon types. Fire doesn't even resist Fairy. For example, Fairy types are only weak to metal in the TCG but they also don't have a Psychic weakness considering they are neural to it in game and weak to Poison, which 'Psychic' also represents in the TCG.
As for multi-weakness Pokemon, this is something I would like to see return because it was something to balance the card. Take fighting for example. Any format Mewtwo EX is in, Fighting Pokemon and some Psychic type aren't used because how how powerful Mega Mewtwo EX is. Now imagine if Machamp EX, Lucario EX or Mega Gallade EX were weak to colorless/flying, It completely changes the dynamics of the meta and future card design. I do agree Fairy was a mistake.
Let us define flying as fighting resistant and lightning weakness.
Flying in the TCG is a weird type. I wouldn't say that flying is grouped into colorless, but more like flying is spread across every single type, except maybe dragon. If a pokemon is flying and psychic, and has features that would make it look like a flying type, like bird features for example, then no matter what other type it has, it is treated as flying in the TCG when it comes to weakness and resistance, but would still have the psychic purple card frame.
The best example is Yveltal. What are darkness types in the TCG are supposed to be weak against normally? Fighting. What is Yveltal weak against? Lightning. Why? Because Yveltal is Primarily Dark, Secondary Flying. The fact that Yveltal is Flying overrides the fact that Yveltal is Dark in the TCG when it comes to weakness and resistance. Yveltal still has the darkness black frame and still uses darkness energies. In most cases of a Pokemon that obviously looks like it has wings, it would have lightning weakness and fighting resistance.
Flying isn't represented in the TCG because in the video games, only Tornadus is a pure flying type, and Noibat and Noivern is the only pokemon that is primarily flying. The rest of them are secondarily flying.
The fact that flying is a secondary type is shown through the weaknesses and resistances, no matter what type they are in the TCG. It is very rare to see a pokemon that isn't dual type normal/flying or pure flying to be a colorless card in the TCG. Even if there is one pokemon that isn't normal/flying or pure flying, the number of colorless cards representing that pokemon is dwarfed by the non-colorless cards that represent that pokemon.
Here is one rule that should always be followed. No type shall ever be weak to colorless. Colorless's strength is that it can use any energy, but its weakness should be the fact that nothing is weak to it. I used to not be the case but adding dragon as a type fixed that. Here is another rule I wished they followed. Only dragon shall be weak against dragon. Too bad they screwed that up with the fairy type.
Zangoose being strong against Machamp never and will never happen because Machamp in the TCG is weak against Poison (4th generation onwards), Ghost, and Psychic, or just Psychic for short. The only thing I can see that doesn't make sense is ice being strong against fire, or poison being weak against poison. That's it. Other than that, the weaknesses and resistances are designed in such a way that it makes sense with the video games.
Steel is strong against rock, but weak against fighting and ground, all 3 of which is represnted by the fighting type in the TCG. How is weakness represented by the metal type in the TCG? Fire. It is always fire, as to not make it so that for some reason, a rock type is strong against a steel type. The only cards that have metal pokemon being weak to fighting pokemon is if it has dual fire and fighting weakness, or if that pokemon was a delta species. All metal pokemon have a weakness to fire. There is one non-delta species metal pokemon card that isn't weak to fire, but weak to lightning, and that is empoleon, because of empoleon also being water in the TCG, as well as skarmory, (see the whole flying overriding weakness and resistance that I mentioned above).
I don't think primary and secondary typing should be an argument. keep in mind the Bird type was intended to be a thing to complement the bug type, which could have been Grass type as well. I too don't want Zangoose to hit Machamp for weakness but why does Nidoking and Muk deserve to hit Mewtwo for Weakness? None of these Pokemon are strong offensively to Mewtwo. The intend here is to give more interaction between card types.
Now not every type should be represented because some work. Bug and Grass can belong together because their relationship is symbiotic and represents nature. Ground/Rock/Fighting are to represent strength so they are fine together, though I'm not opposed to Fighting becoming its own type. We won't ever see a Water weak Machamp but through the current fighting group, they are weak to their appropriate types but the flying type, which is grouped with colorless should also hit for weakness against Bug/Grass/Fighting and not purely exist for a target to the lightning type.
Noivern cards (all of them) have been Dragon type despite being a Dragon secondary (per established rules), Which didn't need its own type to begin with since being a Dragon type is still pretty much colorless in terms of typing for the TCG. Noiverns cards should all be colorless right? Why does Tornadus deserve to be punished by being grouped with an type that can't hit for weakness despite not being a normal type.
The simple thing here is to just make the flying type its own type. Its not needed but they should at least make Pokemon colorless weak. Now there was an argument that the colorless type is splashable and while that is true, many colored Pokemon are more splashable than the colorless type. The argument still works I guess but many Pokemon can use a DCE.
How to balance the Flying-type, and the TCG in general:
Step 1: Don't fix what isn't broken.
Step 2: Put the game designers to work on things that really matter, such as correcting for power creep and fixing the balance of power between EXs and Evolutions.
~SS
Yeah, thats true. I would want them to fix the current issues. no tool removal, locks and such but this isn't the fault of the flying type. If anything, the Dragon type was fine being part of Colorless but here we are.
Odd tried to quote PMJ's quote of a quote but it seems to have failed... refer to that above
This: we already have this problem. There are several sets that have types with VERY little representation sometimes only one or two cards for the entire type. Heck even Dark and Steel when they brought them to the TCG didn't have basic energy until what Gen Four? They even knew then it would be rough the more basic energy types they had in.
I think how they have flying types is fine right now: the lightning weakness with the fighting resistance is fine and can give some types a weakness diversity needed because mono-weakness is not something I like about some types.
Nothing should be weak to Colorless as it is meant to be a generic type that's splash good and also I've come to terms the same for Dragons: which is great for a multi type energy cost Pokemon which they could make a little stronger to justify those multi-type attacks. Originally I didn't like the shift for gen 6 cards but I realized it was for the better. Still not a big fan of so many Psychic Pokemon still weak to Psychic it could ge dicey if they make a similar mistake like they did with Next Destinies. They seemed to learned that from what Mewtwo Y does.
The game was still new. Darkness and Metal energy had Special energy, which no other type had at the time. All types in the TCG should have a basic energy counterpart. The flying type isn't fine right now because they can take 2x the damage while not being able to do the same as well.
Thanks to the high damage fighting types can do (as well as other types) and things like Strong Energy, having a fighting resistance means nothing. I don't think a cards splashability should be a factor in type effectiveness since a lot of splashable cards come from other types and in the TCG, the colorless type is the weakest type in attackers and support. I don't want to use this as an argument but the best attackers for colorless that comes to mind are Mega Ray EX and Lugia EX and maybe Fates Lugia but thats 3 cards out of the entire type. I also realized we don't have a Psychic Lugia or a Fire Ho-Oh.
