Terminology

[DanLite]

I don't know what counts as an official source, but I looked at the "Pokémon Platinum: Prima Official Game Guide", published by Pokémon USA, and they have some discrepancies in egg group names: "Grass group", "Human-like group", "Field group", "Amorphous group", and "Water group 1/2/3" (granted, the Water group names haven't really changed, just the fact they put the number after "group").

[ilexswam]

Sorry I rechecked the book(DP Strategy Guide), the egg group names are Amorphous, Bug, Ditto, Dragon, Fairy, Field, Flying, Human-like, Mineral, Monster, None, Water 1, Water 2, Water 3. The difference between Amorphous/Indeterminate, Human-like/Humanshape should be the translation difference, since they have similar meaning.

Another thing I found in "Pokémon Platinum: Prima Official Game Guide", the term "EV(effort values)" is indeed a official term.

[Arty2]

It's debatable how official Prima's guides are. The term official applies because they have bought the exclusive license to publish such material, but that doesn't mean what they state is cannon. Judging by the "official" guide to R/B I once had, they place tidbits from fansites alongside official information.

[Aeolian]

Smogon isnt wrong lol
you mix up the names and you get confused.
lets face it, if you have the instructions infront of you in the form of a guide its easy to understand, and you aint gonna learn about it any other way unless someone tries to teach you, which will be in reference to a guide.

[Arty2]

I fail to see how a site enforcing their own standards is better than trying to achieve a consensus with the participation of smogon moderators (although they've been apparently busy the over the last few days and thus inactive). Plus, you've just contradicted yourself: people are going to get confused unless they're taught something through a guide. What makes you think setting proper names would be any different?

[Eevee]

Stat Experience isn't half bad, and I'm not even sure if that's canon or fanon, to be honest.

I've been convinced by others that resurrecting "stat exp" for post-GSC effort is a bad idea, just because it's such a wildly different system.

I think that we will need some sort of two letter abbreviation or acronym either way though. This way they would be visually distinct when scanning through text and make it easier to foreigners too. This seems to be the cause of the "IVs" terminology jumping even to the japanese metagame. I'm good for simplicity and plain words, I just think that we need to think of such terms as symbols instead of words that coul be lost in translation.

Is scannability that big a concern? Plenty of important concepts are just regular words that won't stand out in prose, like "nature" or "held item" or even the general concept "stat".

Now, I like Eevee's names, some of them could be a little less bookish though. Some don't even return in Google

That's why there's a separate column full of boring names. 8) I'm okay with not seriously using the most obscure words I could find. I made them up in the first place because I figured they could use names, but the names were sort of a formality when a picture was already right there.

The egg groups name(Water 1, Water 2 and something) is official. Even they're not mentioned in the Game, but they're mentioned in the official walkthrough books. (Pokémon DP Official Nintendo Adventure Guide P.32, other books use them too.)

Urgh. Surely we can buck canon here, since they never appear in the main games and only briefly elsewhere. They're just so, so bad. "Water 1/2/3" are barely any better than just naming egg groups by hex digit.

And the official term for effort values is 基礎ポイント / Base Point. (NPC in Route 9 Department Store of Pokémon Black & White, as well as the item description).

Ouch, that very much conflicts with the well-rooted (and much more reasonable) fanon term "base stat". I wonder how the US translation will phrase this.

I like the awesome body type names

Thanks 8)

[Aeolian]

I fail to see how a site enforcing their own standards is better than trying to achieve a consensus with the participation of smogon moderators (although they've been apparently busy the over the last few days and thus inactive). Plus, you've just contradicted yourself: people are going to get confused unless they're taught something through a guide. What makes you think setting proper names would be any different?

actually i havent contradicted myself :L
point being though there already are propper names - and frankly that is the standardised terminology.
if you start mixing it up calling it random stuff its just going to cause problems.
EV training and IV breeding is not hard to understand {RNG more so..} but still, thats what guides are therefore. and since you wont find a guide which says GENES and the likes you're gonna learn the standardised names.

[Melkor]

I think its way too late for EVs and IVs to be changed. Okay, we're just talking about using Effort and Genes or whatever on our websites, and let fans decide whether they want to stick to old terms or adopt the new ones.

But in the process a lot of questions will be asked: New players get already enough confused as to find the same concept being called different names on different places. They will then ask you or your mods or whoever what we do refer to when saying genes instead of IVs. In the end, the popular name will be kept there in order to avoid further confusion.

I can tell you this because as my website is in Spanish, IVs are called either Genes or IVs in different places, and EVs can be found as "Puntos de Esfuerzo", PE or EVs as well. I was fully supportive into using pure Spanish terminology (Genes, Esfuerzo) until I realized I could be better understood by Spanish fans if I also used common English terms IVs and EVs.

Having different names does not precisely help the purpose of standardization. You want to be understood, and forcing new major terminology onto fans is not the way to go. I would go for a standard based on IVs and EVs, even if they are not as meaningful as we would like them to be. They are pretty much standard by now, anyway.

[Aeolian]

I would go for a standard based on IVs and EVs, even if they are not as meaningful as we would like them to be. They are pretty much standard by now, anyway.

Give the kid a gold star!

[White Phoenix]

As an independent researcher, I have no problem with the names of the egg groups from the guides. I would have preferred more specific terms for ‘water 1’, ‘water 2’ and ‘water 3’, but since they have blurred the definition of one of those groups anyway, it would be impossible now.

The only objection I have ever had with the EV/IV controversy is the use of the terms ‘effort values’ and ‘effort points’, and ‘individual values’ vs. ‘determinate values’. I have seen the first two terms mixed, which confused me until I finally learned that EVs are the type of points earned white effort points are the unit of measurement. As for the last two, while the IVs of the first two generations were calculated differently, so were the stats for special attack and special defense. So I never saw any reason to continue using the term DV when discussing the IV from those games. All that is required is that it is defined so that when someone is using an old guide they will know that DVs and IVs are the same thing, just calculated different.

As for the egg groups, the change from ‘human shape’ to ‘human-like’ is not a lot of difference, but ‘amorphous’ is not the same as ‘indeterminate’ and is more descriptive of the group, unless it only relates to gender. In that case, yes they would be of indeterminate gender.

Prima is not the only guide to use these terms, and whether they come from Game Freak/Creatures/Nintendo or not they are standard terms. Yes, the IVs are a pokémon’s genes. However, genes come in two types, genes of the species (base stats) and genes specific to the individual (IV). So it is better to use the game mechanic terms.

There is one term that I would like people to change universally though: Instead of using the move category ‘other’ I always use the term ‘defensive’. This is more correct since the other two categories are ‘physical (attack)’ and ‘special (attack)’. All of the moves from the ‘other’ category are defensive moves. The term ‘other’ has no meaning. But if you decide to use it, you will need to have the term defined someplace so that when they use another source (like the printed or old internet guides) they will understand that ‘defensive’ and ‘other’ is the same thing. Although, it should be obvious from context, some people are oblivious to the obvious. I work in retail. I know.