Death to Psychic Cup

Make it disappear.

This monstrosity is going to be a major player in Psychic Cup. Ick.

At best, Psychic Cup is a learning aid for people new to Pokémon GO/GO Battle League and a fun way to tie the game’s larger themed promotion to engagement with PvP play. At worst, it’s an uninterestingly shallow meta and a desperate attempt for Niantic to inflate the seeming importance of an in-game event focused on Psychic-type Pokémon. So, which is it? I’ll let you, the reader, make the final call, but let’s consider the merits and demerits of this format alongside discussion of monotype limited metas in general.

First of all, what is Psychic Cup? Prepare for your brain to be busted. Psychic Cup is a format subject to Great League restrictions in which all Pokémon that participate must be—Psychic-type Pokémon. Yeah, there’s not much mystery here. Evidently, Niantic couldn’t even be bothered to try to jazz it up with a name evocative of the theme. Mind Cup? Intuition Cup? I thought about this for five minutes and came up with those options. In the spirit of Psychic Cup, shouldn’t we, ahem, be thinking outside the box?

If you’re familiar with Pokémon and the Type Chart, your first thought might be, “Wait—if they’re all Psychic-type Pokémon, and Psychic-type Pokémon resist Psychic-type moves, isn’t that a stupid idea for a Cup?” And my response to you would be, “Well, yeah—pretty much.” For a Psychic-type Pokémon to have value in a limited meta in which only Psychic-type Pokémon are permitted, it’s going to need some way to do super effective damage or at least neutral damage to the opponent’s Pokémon.

Consequently, of the 100 eligible Pokémon listed on PvPoke’s Psychic Cup rankings (Mew, with access to the Ghost-type move Shadow Claw, is expressly ineligible), only a handful are truly viable. Galarian Rapidash and Victini share the top ranking at a score of 93.7 based on their performance across different roles and their consistency. The former, despite this season’s nerf to Body Slam, has access to the newly buffed Fairy Wind, not to mention Megahorn, a Bug-type nuke that does super effective damage to Psychic-type Pokémon. The latter, meanwhile, does neutral damage with Quick Attack, a Normal-type move, and V-Create and Overheat, two Fire-type moves. Galarian Slowbro just got access to Brutal Swing, an improved Dark-type move that also does super effective damage to Psychic-type Pokémon. Claydol, which already had Shadow Ball, a Ghost-type move that—you guessed it—does super effective damage to Psychic-type in its move pool, gets a bump from the boost to Mud Slap. Malamar, one of the big winners of Season 20, learns Foul Play, a Dark-type move. Bruxish knows Bite, a heavy damage Dark-type Fast Attack.

After them, the scores start going down precipitously. Hoopa, Beheeyem, Elgyem, and Chimecho all see their stocks rise with the buff to the Ghost-type move Astonish, and the male variant of Meowstic is suddenly more relevant with the buff to the Dark-type move Sucker Punch, but they all still aren’t top-tier picks. What’s more, they’re likely not useful in any other context. Hoopa’s ranking in open Great League? 905, and you need 100,000 Stardust to teach it a second move. Elgyem? 924, and it needs to be fully powered up for the Rank 1 stat spread. These are expensive builds for one week of play. Even if you’re sitting on millions of Stardust, it doesn’t seem worth it.

All told, only five Pokémon get a score of 90 or better in the PvPoke rankings. By the time we get to Armarouge at Rank 20, we’re down to 75.6. In a mode of play in which what is construed as the “meta” already tends to constrain Pokémon usage, this feeling of top-heaviness is only exacerbated in Psychic Cup. This is to say that if you’re already finding certain Pokémon all too common in open Great League, get ready to see the same few Pokémon again and again and again in Psychic Cup.

I’ve seen content creators and people familiar to the PoGO community such as Caleb Peng defend limited metas like Psychic Cup in the past on the basis that newcomers can use the format to work on their fundamentals as they learn and improve their battling skills. Because the Pokémon deployed are fairly few and, thus, there is less of an emphasis on team building, Trainers can focus more on managing their Fast Move energy, their Protect Shields, and when to switch Pokémon. This is all well and good for these neophytes, but to more seasoned players, monotype cups are, to borrow a technical term, boring as shit.

They also lend themselves to the kinds of RPS (rock-paper-scissors) situations that make for less compelling gameplay/viewership, generally speaking. Take the matchup between Galarian Rapidash and Galarian Slowbro. If the “G-Dash” user baits effectively, they can make the one-shield scenario fairly close, but in the zero-shield scenario, “G-Bro” wins pretty decisively, and in the two-shield scenario, it outright obliterates its one-horned opposition. Poison-type moves are super effective against Fairy-type Pokémon. You can try to play your way out of that reality as the G-Dash owner, but if the alignment isn’t in your favor, there’s not a whole lot you can do. To put this another way, depending on the circumstances, your skill can only take you so far.

Psychic Cup coincides with the Psychic Spectacular Event running from September 18 to September 22. While this makes sense from a spiritual standpoint, it doesn’t necessarily make for compelling gameplay. I don’t have psychic abilities, but I do foresee this much: pain for those who queue up to battle in this format.

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Why is Psychic Cup home to so many nightmare fuel Pokémon?

This is not the first time that Niantic has trotted out Psychic Cup, and knowing them, it probably won’t be the last. For whatever reason, the powers-that-be behind the GO Battle League schedule have a certain fondness for monotype limited metas. Flying Cup. Fighting Cup. Technically, Bidoof Cup was a monotype format, in that it was a mono-Pokémon format. It also was a joke that lasted one day—and may have been the greatest day in GBL history. Bidoof-only marvels of mobile gaming notwithstanding, these narrowly focused Cups have been largely panned by the members of the Pokémon GO community with whom I’ve discoursed.

These reviews I’ve noted are anecdotal and therefore not necessarily indicative of the views of the entire population, but they make me wonder who’s asking for these one-type metas in the first place. The only Trainers from whom I’ve received positive reviews about Psychic Cup and its ilk are casual battlers—or those who have found success in them and therefore have a positive mental/emotional association with them. In other words, they’re either not particularly concerned about their rank/rating, or they managed to climb through some combination of skill and luck and subsequently have largely dismissed concerns about the structural deficiencies of what they just played. Time heals all wounds, and in competitive gaming, winning often goes a long way in determining appraisals of what is “fun” and what isn’t.

I wonder as well how Niantic is garnering feedback about Psychic Cup in the first place. The company’s communications and attentiveness to the player base are, ahem, not exactly celebrated for their excellence. How do they know what we like and what we don’t like? Are they tracking the number of active users and judging by that metric? How do they know that people aren’t just battling for the 4x Stardust from win rewards? Periodically, I’ve received in-game surveys, but they’ve been all of two questions in length and basically amount to my likelihood to recommend the game to a friend. Not only are these solicitations of my feedback not very nuanced, uh, Niantic—I’m not sure you really want to know what I think about your game.

On the note of the 4x Stardust rewards, Psychic Cup is the alternative to open Master League during that rotation, and I know there are those who will back the direction of this content. “Look—you don’t have to play Master League! There’s another option! Extra Stardust! What more do you want?” Quite frankly, I want the other other Cup—unless that would just be an even more asinine format than one which features only Psychic-type Pokémon. I shudder to think what such a limited meta might even look like. Certainly, Niantic could’ve scheduled Great League Remix in this spot instead and run some other nonsense opposite Halloween Cup: Great League Edition. That GL Remix and Halloween Cup are confined to the same week seems almost criminal, or at least it would be if Niantic didn’t nerf half of last season’s meta into the ground, thereby rendering most of its exclusions for this iteration of GL Remix moot because they’re not top meta in open GL anyway. I’d still take that over Psychic Cup, though.

The sad part is, either I will be playing Psychic Cup this week—or I won’t be playing at all. In the comments section of one of Jonkus’s recent YouTube videos, I wrote that I’d probably be playing Galar Cup: Little Edition this week, much to my chagrin, since I’m trash at Ultra League, I don’t care for Psychic Cup, and I can’t play “Whale League” a.k.a. Master League. I received this reply:

Whale league is the most fun, and the most rewarding stardust wise. If you love the game it’s worth the investment, it’s not for the brokies or the casuals. If you’re not committed just say so

I’d be mad at this take if it weren’t so laughably bad. Right off the bat, it’s exclusionary and revels in that notion. “Actually, it’s a good thing that more people can’t play!” A system that bars players who either don’t have the disposable income to afford the top Pokémon in a certain league, the spare time to grind out the XL Candies to fully power up those Pokémon that are somehow viable without being Legendaries or Mythicals, or the personal objection to spending tens to hundreds of dollars simply to compete in an ostensibly free game is a broken system. Full stop. Defending that system because it works for you is elitist and potentially betrays, I think, a latent fear of being unable to compete without a watered-down pool of participants. Not to get too political, but this is like defending capitalism because success isn’t for “the brokies” or because these filthy casuals aren’t “committed” enough to earn a living wage. It’s easy to believe the narrative that your singular talent and drive are what brought you to the level of achievement you’ve managed when you conveniently ignore the proverbial thumb on the scale.

Before I lose myself in visions of a Poké-revolution, let’s bring this conversation back to the topic at hand. Death to Psychic Cup and all other limited metas like it. Despite any utility they might have to teach game mechanics to newbies and their appeal to more casual battlers, Niantic should be challenged to come up with more inventive formats and figure out some other way to promote their in-game events. Because this ain’t it, Chief.