[Humour] Ideas for making more species more relevant
1. Voltorb used Explosion!
2. Walking Meowth gives coins instead of candy.
3. I thought Delibird gives gifts?
4. Fly or teleport short distances. Limited use.
Feel free to contribute your ideas!
Answers
You say "humour", but I actually really like your first 3 ideas!
For the fourth I am more skeptical. Maybe, since you use it with one pokémon, you could limit that to fly/teleport to a gym you have a badge and the only think you can do is look at what is around, notably radar and ongoing raids. No catch, no distance walked, no fighting, no pokestop/gym spinning.
To go a step further, I wish Pokémon had their abilities from the main games in GO. How cool would it be to have things like sandstorms when you’re using fighting with/against Tyranitar? Politoed could make it rain, giving a pseudo weather boost to water, electric, and bug types in the vicinity.
Another sort of humorous option could be Blissey giving lucky eggs, as it’s in her dex entry. But of course it’d have to be extremely rare, or she could give normal eggs.
I like the blissey idea, but I'm sure the devs won't like it. I doubt they want to give us any "store" items for free.
Having abilities could be a very good way to make weaker pokemon relevant. The way they've only translated part of the pokemon's powers from the main series (limited move pools, no abilities, a stat formula that prioritizes certain stats etc.) has made most of the species obsolete. But they are clearly trying to keep the game somewhat simple.
I believe the next "complexity" additions could be abilities and breeding. Starting off with a few simple abilities that change the weather in your favor or boost a certain stat under circumstances and possibly breeding that could give exclusive moves. Marketing-wise any major update should be spring-early summer to have a better impact in playerbase, so we will have to wait a bit :P
Blissey is already too powerful. No need to make her an egg source.
Since fog is very rare and many areas never have snow, I would support a way for certain Pokemon to change the weather, but how would this be implemented in a simple and fair way?
As Bellick mentioned below, some abilities could be introduced through buddy walking (which has already been indirectly nerfed by raids providing easy candy for many species).
1. I've been a proponent of explosion Voltorb/Electrode for a while so absolutely yes! It would be amazing to begin a raid with a team of Kamikazee Electrode whose sole purpose is to detonate and die in a holy blaze of glory.
2-3. I never thought about it, but yeah, an easier way to introduce abilities would be to add them passively, so that Pokemon can only use them outside of battle when being walked as buddies. I mean, I would still prefer having them introduced in battle, but if it is that hard to implement, they could just do the other.
4. Instead, I would prefer if incense could attract nearby Pokemon to your location, just like everyone thought it worked in the beginning. It would make a rather underwhelming item into something amazing and desirable. I could also get behind some item that increased the interaction radius of the avatar for a limited time. It would sort of serve the same purpose of teleportation but would not mess with your location.
1 to 3 I could take it or leave (great ideas nonetheless) but I think a good way to implement #4 would a special store item that increases the radius of spawns and stops you can reach from any given location so suddenly the the stops about a block from you could be spun andnot like the quarter block or so at normal... that would be cool...
