The Law of Unintended Consequences
I was reading Dondon's nice article on A Defender's Comparison Using Pareto Frontiers
And I wanted to focus on this paragraph for a moment:
Still, if all of these species had competitive CP or if CP wasn't a factor in gym placement, then one could imagine a more diverse gym metagame that contained 15+ commonly-seen defender species instead of just 7. (Niantic pls)
Wouldn't a potential unintended consequence of such a change be More Static Level 10 Towers, not fewer?
Or a plus to the hardest core (or cheaters) who have many Dragonite/Tyrantirs to attack
The attacker is still limited to 6 pokemon.
When the Gyms only have roughly 7 pokemon, your odds of a Counter working on 2 Defenders in a row (think Jolteon facing 2 Garys) is far higher than if you have 15+ roughly.
Just a random musing to consider.
Answers
Yes. This is why I argue that it will take an overhaul of battle mechanics, the rewards system, tiers, CP, pretty much everything to make something that has any lasting change. The whole "if these other 5 mons were in there" thing just won't help much or in the long run, at all.
And yes, it could make certain combinations a slight bit harder but others would also be much easier for certain accounts with a better population of generalists or powered up counters that have multiple uses.
Thankfully, you can use many of the counters on the tier 1-2.5 defender pokemon on tiers 3-3.5 defenders
Other than the obvious 'dragonite still destroys them', we have:
Flareon that will trash steelix, and lapras, and at the same time take on Blissey,
Machamp trashes lapras too, and takes on blissey, jolt can handle slowbro (but at the same time, it is defo tougher) egg man can handle slowbro, while serving as blissey counter too etc.
So, to the knowledgable gym player, it wouldn't make too big of a difference i imagine. Just a bit more annoying though as I wouldn't instinctively know what to do with a slowbro until I think it through for a few seconds.
I agree but the point is making the gym system more realistic and fun, not seeing the same mon again and again and again...
Also I expect not only the cp to be removed/changed, but them to add battle stats, like paralyze, poison, burn, sleep...and also battle items like attack, defense or speed boost.
This way battles will be more attactive, diverse and despite not having the advantage of having a mon that is 2xeffective versus many defenders it will make you think more about what mon to choose for each battle and what attacks and effects does he has.
