Is it hard to create fire types?

[Flamer]

If there's going to be a lot of Fire types, there needs to be locations to put them in. Fire may be a starter type, but unlike Water and Grass, Volcanoes and Fiery caverns aren't your everyday sight. Bearing this in mind, when Game Freak do want to add several new Fire types, they have to get a bit creative, like sticking Volcanora in the Desert and making Litwick half Ghost so it could inhabit that tower. I've never had a look at how many of Pokemon there are for each type, but I'm willing to bet that types that fit better into more common terrain are higher up on the list.

That said, there does need to be a balance between realism and gameplay. Yes, Sinnoh was a cold region, but the lack of Fire types certainly hampered my enjoyment of the game.

[blaze boy]

but the lack of Fire types certainly hampered my enjoyment of the game.

I really doubt that since you could either;

-Chose Chimchar or traded for one.
- Caught a Ponyta.
-Trade with someone who had finished the game and was willing to trade you a fire pokémon that wasn't in the Sinnoh pokémon dex.
- Buy Platinum that gave you more fire pokémon to play around with.
- Gone without a fire type since flying, poison, rock, steel and fighting pretty much covers any advantage that fire type pokémon has.

[vhanix]

Actually, it is not that difficult to come up with a fire type pokemon. Like they say, "just add fire" like a sheep then envelop it with fire. What's more? There is actually no need to just "add some fire" to make a fire type pokemon - Darumaka pops in - you could come up with a salamander painted it red (though salamander story is always with fire). The point is imagination my dear, the goal to get that money and a perfect marketing strategy - there will always someone who will like that pokemon.

[Mystical Jackal]

The list of fire type Pokemons is shorter than you think. Just disconsider the starters and you'll see how few fire types we have in general to fill our teams if we don't choose the fire starter. Designing a cool fire type Pokemon is likely to be a hard work, it is not just covering an animal with flames and painting it with red or orange. It is so hard that the first three-stage evolutionary line came in Generation IV (the addition of Magmortar), while we have a three-stage evolutionary line for grass and water since Generation I (Oddish, Bellsprout and Poliwag's line).

Sinnoh as an entire region is cold; that was reinforced with the extra snow you see everywhere in Platinum. Pokemon are designed to fit an environment, and cold environments do not inspire Fire-types.

Sinnoh was intended to be a cold region consisting largely of mountainous and rocky areas, and was overall very damp. The only reason more Fire-types were added in Platinum is because people complained that the region had too few Fire-types.

Then... Did GF make Sinnoh cold to disguise the lack of fire types or did GF make few fire types because Sinnoh was intended to be cold since from the start?

And the thread isn't only about Sinnoh. According to what you said, then Hoenn should have more fire types. Introducing only 3 new fire types in Hoenn were too few for a region that got a volcano mountain in its center.

[Flamer]

I really doubt that since you could either;
-Chose Chimchar or traded for one.
- Caught a Ponyta.
-Trade with someone who had finished the game and was willing to trade you a fire pokémon that wasn't in the Sinnoh pokémon dex.
- Buy Platinum that gave you more fire pokémon to play around with.
- Gone without a fire type since flying, poison, rock, steel and fighting pretty much covers any advantage that fire type pokémon has.

Being a fan of Fire types, it was certainly disappointing to play through the whole game only to discover the only new Fire type aside from the obligatory starter line was Magmortar. So yeah, that did hamper my enjoyment of the game. So did not having any options when it came to adding fire type Pokemon to my team. I've never been a big Ponyta/Rapidash fan so would have been nice to be offered an alternative and trading with someone who'd completed the game wasn't a option at the time.

Platinum certainly did give you a few more Fire types and I appreciate Game Freak took the time to address the problem, (along with many of the other problems D/P had).

[ansem the wise]

I really doubt that since you could either;

-Chose Chimchar or traded for one.
- Caught a Ponyta.
-Trade with someone who had finished the game and was willing to trade you a fire pokémon that wasn't in the Sinnoh pokémon dex.
- Buy Platinum that gave you more fire pokémon to play around with.
- Gone without a fire type since flying, poison, rock, steel and fighting pretty much covers any advantage that fire type pokémon has.

- I usually consider starters to be kinda cheatish, but not as much as legendaries.
- lame
- lack of gym badges
- 30$
- where is the fun in that?

[Arlo]

Thinking about this the other night, and I'm pretty sure I figured out why there was a relative shortage of fire types in previous gens and not in gen V.

First though - some clarification and amplification - the notion that GF has apparently shorted the games on Fire types because they're "lazy" or "out of ideas" or any of the rest of that is flatly ridiculous. As I said earlier on this thread, but apparently to no avail, these people are professionals. YOU might fail to do something because you're lazy or unimaginative, but we're talking here about people who were hired by a multimillion dollar company SPECIFICALLY to come up with ideas. That's what they do, every single day. That's what they get paid for.

Now - the reason for the shortage of Fires in past games is actually fairly clear, and it's summed up by advice that you'll read in pretty much any guide to any of the games before Gen V - among other things, the three starters provided a range of early game difficulty - the Grass starter, in virtually all cases, had the most advantage early in the game, while the Water starter didn't have quite as much of one, and the Fire starter was generally at a disadvantage in the early gyms. But what did virtually all of these guides go on to point out? If you want a Fire type on your team, you'll probably want to take the Fire starter, BECAUSE THERE AREN'T MANY OTHER OPTIONS.

It was a way to balance risk and reward. The Grass starter is most useful in the early game but not so much so in the long run - it's the low-risk early choice but it's not as rewarding later. The Water starter is useful early too, but not quite so much so, and it's more useful later on, but there are lots of other waters to be had too - it's medium risk and medium reward. The Fire starter is not very useful at all early in the game, but becomes much more so later, and is just that much more important later because there aren't many other Fire types to be had - it's the high risk but high reward choice.

But in Gen V, they changed the gyms so that none of the three starter types has a particular advantage or disadvantage early in the game, or late in the game for that matter, so there was no reason to limit the number of Fire types, so they didn't. Which is why there are more Fire types (and probably also why there are relatively fewer Water types) in Unova.

I have little doubt that that's the reality. It all adds up and all fits together.

And if nothing else, it's MUCH more likely than that a staff of well-paid and qualified professionals somehow spontaneously became stupid and lazy and unimaginative....

[Dragontail]

Well, they could get a little more creative (think Water-Fire "Boiling" Pokemon)

[!jirachi!]

Well, they could get a little more creative (think Water-Fire "Boiling" Pokemon)

I always wanted such a pokemon though I would like poison fire to

[Excitable Boy]

The list of fire type Pokemons is shorter than you think. Just disconsider the starters

Right, because starters aren't Pokemon.

Then... Did GF make Sinnoh cold to disguise the lack of fire types or did GF make few fire types because Sinnoh was intended to be cold since from the start?

GameFreak designs Pokemon and gives them attributes to fit the game, not the other way around. The interviews concerning BW Pokemon design confirm this.

And the thread isn't only about Sinnoh. According to what you said, then Hoenn should have more fire types. Introducing only 3 new fire types in Hoenn were too few for a region that got a volcano mountain in its center.

And the rest of it is either forest/grassland, mountainous, or a big ol' ocean. Considering how little of the Mt. Chimney area you actually explore (Fiery Path, Route 112, and Jagged Pass are about it, and they all have their own new encounters already without another Fire-type; Mt. Chimney itself has no wild Pokemon), it's understandable why there wouldn't be more than five lines of Fire-types in the region.

[Stymie]

Right, because starters aren't Pokemon.



GameFreak designs Pokemon and gives them attributes to fit the game, not the other way around. The interviews concerning BW Pokemon design confirm this.



And the rest of it is either forest/grassland, mountainous, or a big ol' ocean. Considering how little of the Mt. Chimney area you actually explore (Fiery Path, Route 112, and Jagged Pass are about it, and they all have their own new encounters already without another Fire-type; Mt. Chimney itself has no wild Pokemon), it's understandable why there wouldn't be more than five lines of Fire-types in the region.

exactly other types are everywhere in nature, fire is barely prevalent

[PaddysTurtwigFanClub]

Fire is exactly the same as any other type. It is not hard to make them, just hard to make ones that are good both design wise and for battling.
They are not hard to make, but gamefreak just don't make them as common as other types. Take the lack of them in dp, which really is a disgrace, I still think it was to promote chimchar! Platinum wasn't much better either, if i recall correctly we were threw Houndour and Eevee to evolve to Flareon (There may be more), but there was still no abundance of them.
Gen V was filled with highs and lows for fire. Tepig wasn't that bad, but still not perfect. Damanitan was cool enough but had mediocre stats. But Volcarona and Chandelure were good, too good... But heatmor and simisear balanced that out.

We will probably get some nice fire types in gen 6 (fennekin!) but I asume the region will not be drowned with them.

[The Musician]

It's definitely not difficult to come up with ideas for fire-types, especially, like others have pointed out, the developers at GF come up with ideas for a living. If they had trouble or ran out of ideas, they would be fired and replaced by fresh minds.

It also annoys me when people say "...aside from the starters." Why should they be discounted as fire Pokemon? That could very well be a reason why they don't make as many other fire-types.

But I believe, again as others have stated, that the quantity of each Pokemon type in a given region is attributed to the types of locales in that region. It doesn't make sense to slap a bunch of fire-types in a region if there are few to no locations that would logically support them (Sinnoh). The prevalence of large bodies of waters, grassy fields, and forests throughout the series is probably why we have so many water, grass, normal, and flying-types (also because plants, mammals, birds, and fish/amphibians are easily represented by those types). That's not to say they can't be creative and make fire horses or volcano camels, but those types of Pokemon don't fit as easily every location or biome.

[Grimer]

Fire is my favorite type. It's a shame that there isn't more, maybe it's for the best.

[Mystical Jackal]

Right, because starters aren't Pokemon.

You didn't get the point, boy.

If you don't pick the water starter, you have a bunch of water Pokemons to choose.

If you don't pick the grass starter, you have some grass Pokemons out there.

But if you don't pick the fire starter... you have few or even none fire Pokemons types to choose.

[StanTheStaraptor]

I thought that fire being so scarce in nature was quite a valid reason for it to be so scarce in Pokémon.