Hey everyone. I was hoping for some insight on what others think works for monster types in monster catching games (such as Pokemon), and how much they agree/disagree with my own thoughts. I was originally going down a design hole where I was just imagining as much as possible and then deciding what to cut, but as I was developing the monster types I had someone mention that one of the reasons they loved Pokemon was for its simplicity, and I realised what I was developing was the opposite of that.

I had a rough design for something like this:

Standard (single-type monsters i.e. Air)

Dual (two-type monsters i.e. Air-Electric)

Archetype (unique two-type monster combined into a new type i.e. Storm (Air-Electricity))

Legendary (same as Archetype but for more significant concepts i.e. Harmony (Fire-Water))

Unique (man-made monster types i.e. Taint)

And the way I was gonna showcase it is provided rather poorly in this example (The two types Fire-Water combined into Radiant - ignore that not making sense):

I thought including all these different types would be fun and add some variety. However on further thought I was looking at things backwards. Types in Pokemon were originally used to give monsters strengths and weaknesses via a damage buff/debuff. Over-complicating this formula makes the reason for them lose value, and players will start to feel overwhelmed just keeping track of the different monster types.

Instead what gave Pokemon individuality was their design itself, and adding a new type isn't necessary for this design. So I thought of following the same concept, but only showing it on the design side rather then the player side. For example, the Archetype 'Storm' will be a monster based on the concept, but the type will still be Air-Electric rather then becoming a new type. Same with Legendary. Unique would stay because they have reasons for existing, for example Taint is the corruption of monsters via a scientist experimenting on them and so they become outside of the norm. So the new version would look like this:

Standard (single-type monsters i.e. Air)

Dual (two-type monsters i.e. Air-Electric)

Archetype (two-type unique monster based on a concept i.e. Air-Electricity (Storm)) Legendary (i.e. Fire-Water (Harmony))

Unique (man-made monster types i.e. Taint)

I had even more silly ideas beyond this like having the Archetype as special Mythic monsters. Or throwing in a variety of standard types like Soul and Plasma. However I believe types should be instantly understandable to the player, and they should be able to correlate weaknesses and strengths using common sense. It wouldn't be fun to have to constantly figure out what is weak to what, juggling a bunch of different types in your head.

In a way the Dual and Archetype categories are both the same, and I have had the thought of combining the two. I'm just not sure if the idea of a combination will restrict what types of dual-type monsters can be created. If I focus on keeping a short and simple amount of types in the Standard monster types, I shouldn't have any problems in terms of complexity as the rest will be based on the standard types. As far as I've thought anyhow.

I'll think on it some more but I'd appreciate any thoughts on the subject. If you have any ideas yourself I'd love to hear them.This is a passion project that I'm working on by myself so I don't really have other people to bounce ideas off.

You are mixing up at least four independent concepts:

• Pokémon-like monster types, with the possibility of combining two types in the case of dual type monsters (or maybe even more types). It isn't clear how dual type monsters would be better or worse than single type monsters, or different enough for tactical and strategical purposes.
• Differences between monster types: rare and common ones, elemental and "man-made", natural and eldritch...
  Probably they should just be informal meaningful justifications for stats and abilities, for example monsters of certain types healing damage from certain attack types with difficulty, or exotic types eluding defenses that are understood to be optimized against common types.
• Monster ranks like plain, "Archetype", "Legendary", "Mythic" and maybe more. More "special" monsters should be just better; there's no reason to restrict higher ranks to dual-type monsters.
• Other non-type monster attributes, e.g. normal/tainted, normal/shiny Pokémon, normal/shadow Pokémon, normal/giant Pokémon, that can provide useful monster variety or plot material.

On 12/10/2018 at 4:11 AM, ShiftyCake said:

I had someone mention that one of the reasons they loved Pokemon was for its simplicity

Clearly, that person didn't get too far into understanding how complex Pokemon can get. If you know how competitive Pokemon can be, it can get REALLY complicated. If you want to learn about it, read this article.

Anyway, I think there can be benefits and downsides to over complicating type fusions, such as your archetype and legendary, but don't always assume that more strategy = more fun. There's a reason why Tactical RPGs aren't an RPG player's cup of tea.

Benefits could be higher stats, more abilities compared to dual types and single types, incentives to get these as soon as possible.

Downsides could be players always lose interest in new dual types and single types once a full fusion type party has been set up, a lot of decisions for optimizing a full party of them could be more time/thought consuming, people discarding a dual or single type monster for a fusion type could backfire if not prepared well and end up with a lesser ally in doing so starting off.

Some things that could potentially be benefits/downsides depending on how you handle them: plot relevance/explanations, how unique designs are, pvp.