We started this off with the idea of making a modified Love Cup featuring an allowed list of red and pink Pokémon. We also decided to allow in some Pokémon with thematic relationships with friendship and love, such as Umbreon, Latias, and Nidoqueen and Nidoking. After a surprisingly vigorous discussion about Amor vs Amore, the devs got down to work.
At the same time some Pokémon have been used a lot across different PvP formats recently, so it was suggested that they take a break for a meta. Things like Lickilicky and Scizor were excluded for that reason, and others were excluded for accessibility like Morgrem, or because banning certain moves made them useless.
Since it’s mostly a color based meta with no real type restrictions, at first glance there seemed to be a lot of fire, rock, and ground running around playing rock, paper, and scissors with their heavy hitting fast moves. So incinerate, smack down, mud slap, and charm all had to go. The idea was to give far fewer farm down opportunities and force energy to be thrown to get KO’s.
Hopefully we achieved the more dynamic gameplay that we were looking for in this meta! Please enjoy the Amor Cup.