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On November 17 2017 19:03 Laurens wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2017 05:50 andrewlt wrote:On November 17 2017 01:54 chocorush wrote:
Most OG pokemon players stopped playing somewhere around gen 2 or 3, though are still willing to buy the retro stuff (pokemon go's popularity is also related). We sell pokemon cards, and the original 150 are far more popular than any of the new stuff. I played 1, skipped 2 and 3, and played 4. Pokemon Go made me pick up 5-7. I didn't see a Pokemon Go related spike in sales when I was looking at it. That said, I can attest that the related merchandising is still extremely strong. I know younger folks who are in to the toys and such and I passed through a store while visiting Japan recently. You literally skipped 2 of the best gens. Please go back and rectify this. My opinion of course. Gen 2 had 16 gyms, decent final battle, dozens of QoL updates over the first gen and some nice nostalgia trips through Kanto at the end. Bit underwhelming in terms of new Pokemon. Gen 3 was a great leap in terms of graphics, introduced 2v2s and something resembling an 'endgame' in the form of the battle tower. Also had the greatest line-up of new pokemon of any gen to date imo. (Salamence, Metagross, Gardevoir, Aggron, ... so many 2 stage families) So uh yeah, you should go play those man!
Agree for 3 and 4, not so much for 2.
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I actually don't really like Gen 4 (or at least the core Gen 4 games, I like the Gen 4.5 remakes), in large part because I hate how the main game is paced in terms of gameplay.
A lot of the sense of progression in Pokemon comes from having imperfect answers to various problems through the game, and figuring out how your team can accommodate it. That kind of progression sort of demands that a lot of your early game Pokemon suck and things slowly scale up to better Pokemon over time.
Gen 4 suffers from everything being a little too good, and the game spoon-feeding you solutions to problems before they happen, so you never feel like you have imperfect answers. The starters are all really good and their dual-typing/movesets mean they never feel like they're deficient at any point in the game. The early Pokemon all just feel streamlined and optimized--compared to past first-bird Pokemon, the Starly line is super min-maxed and just really good for the entire game, and Bidoof/Bibarel feel incredibly forced as an HM slave for you to dump HMs on right from the beginning. And the Pokemon you catch always just seem like they're all prepped for the next challenge that you're going to face (i.e. Machop being conveniently catchable right before the rock gym).
Everything just feels hyper-streamlined to make the game as painless as possible which just ends up making the entire experience feel soulless. HG/SS don't have this problem because they replicate the progression from gen 2, and Gen 5 goes back to having a much more natural progression (i.e. having shitty starters again).
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I do not like D/P either, but i really loved HG/SS.
D/P are probably my least favourite games of all the pokémon games.
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On November 17 2017 20:00 TheYango wrote:Frolo, I agree/sympathize with the rest of your criticisms, but... What about IVs now are so different from gen 1/2 IVs? The fact that they're generated in a range of 0-31 instead of 0-15 is basically meaningless from a player perspective, especially since the gen 1-2 IVs were doubled anyway. They make the same contribution to a Pokemon's stats, they're just randomized with finer granularity in gen 3 onward. Phys/special split is one of the single best changes for making the games more intuitive. Moves like Bite using SpAtk just because it was a Dark type move made zero goddamn sense. I don't see how making moves utilize the stat that makes more thematic sense is in any way bad. If a move sounds like a physical attack, it should use Atk. If it sounds like a special attack, it should use SpAtk. Obviously there will be some gray area moves, but having moves utilize the stat that makes logical sense for what the move sounds like it does is way better than having to memorize an arbitrary list of which types are physical and which types are special. I started with Gen 1 also, so that list is burned into my brain, but that doesn't mean I'm going to be blind to the fact that things are way better the way they are now. Show nested quote +On November 17 2017 16:39 Frolossus wrote:
pretty much anything that involves mostly or completely hidden numbers for game mechanics adds a lot of frustration to the game as is. the only way around it is to dump your save and read the values in a memory editor. Most of these numbers are not meant to be things that a player is supposed to know or interact with on a numerical level. The only reason these things came to be known and utilized by the wider community is solely because of the competitive community. For the average player, these mechanics are supposed to simulate random genetic variation--i.e. something you don't have control over and aren't supposed to manipulate. Attempting to manipulate these mechanics does degrade the single player experience, but I don't think that makes these mechanics intrinsically bad, only that the games are not designed around the idea of the player playing god. Besides, Gen 1 and Gen 2 do a ton of information-hiding too anyway. For example, the Friendship mechanic that lead to some of the more arcane evolution requirements in the series was introduced in Gen 2, and was already utilized there for baby Pokemon evolution. You just weren't aware of it when you played them for the first time, so knowledge of what's under the hood didn't ruin the magic for you.
the first system wasn't perfect but at least it had a lower spread so it was less impactful on your pokemon. the purpose of the mechanic is so that every pokemon can seem sorta unique but kinda like how diablo 3 loot works, all it does is make 99% of pokemon you get feel worthless rather than uinque and interesting. instead of how they did it i'd rather have something stat agnostic like maybe the spinda pattern system applied through pseudo genetics to make your pokemon look cool. another option is to go full chao garden if they wanted to have a stat based genetic system where each subsequent generation of pokemon bred with good parents would have a slightly higher upper bound of stat ranges until a cutoff point. the old system also inadvertently created value for less desirably rolled pokemon as lower rolls were tied to shinyness
phys special split might be intuitive but i have two problems with it. one is that it basically split every damage move in two and most of the time there isn't enough to distinguish them from each other. the second is that there is nothing wrong with having relatively bad moves to gate progression. they don't let you start with surf and earthquake right away for a similar reason. i think i would have rather seen them collapse the stats into a single damage type and removing some complexity going forward instead of doubling down on the split.
day/night could have benefited a lot from visual indicators or just straight up text like an egg hatching. friendship and even trading evolutions were really terribly communicated ideas but i think the problem is that it's gotten so much worse than those. feebas, nicada, sliggoo and many others are all things that i would have no chance of discovering through just playing the game and not looking up the mechanics online unless i got really lucky. the problem with these are that there are so many different ways to trigger these evolutions but they are all slightly different and unclear to the player. obviously the point is to let there be new ways to interact with the evolution mechanics but there really needs to be a better way to communicate these to the player while they are playing the game.
On November 17 2017 19:03 Laurens wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2017 05:50 andrewlt wrote:On November 17 2017 01:54 chocorush wrote:
Most OG pokemon players stopped playing somewhere around gen 2 or 3, though are still willing to buy the retro stuff (pokemon go's popularity is also related). We sell pokemon cards, and the original 150 are far more popular than any of the new stuff. I played 1, skipped 2 and 3, and played 4. Pokemon Go made me pick up 5-7. I didn't see a Pokemon Go related spike in sales when I was looking at it. That said, I can attest that the related merchandising is still extremely strong. I know younger folks who are in to the toys and such and I passed through a store while visiting Japan recently. You literally skipped 2 of the best gens. Please go back and rectify this. My opinion of course. Gen 2 had 16 gyms, decent final battle, dozens of QoL updates over the first gen and some nice nostalgia trips through Kanto at the end. Bit underwhelming in terms of new Pokemon. Gen 3 was a great leap in terms of graphics, introduced 2v2s and something resembling an 'endgame' in the form of the battle tower. Also had the greatest line-up of new pokemon of any gen to date imo. (Salamence, Metagross, Gardevoir, Aggron, ... so many 2 stage families) So uh yeah, you should go play those man!
gen 2 had the first battle tower in crystal.
gen 4 had a really cool sense of scale that i feel like the others never quite managed. but god damn the game felt so slow to play.
side not that i feel that legendary events got a lot worse in game over time too. gen 1 was super plain and had moltres in victory road. cerulean cave was kinda cool. gen 2 had a peak where it was pretty clearly communicated where the legendaries were and how to get them but they didn't really force them on you. they just felt like a part of the world.
gen 3 did something really cool with the regi puzzle but unfortunately they did those braille texts to get it all. there should've been a dictionary or something in game so you could actually figure it out without looking it up or already knowing braille.
gen 4 legendaries got annoying cause they made like 15 of them that gen. then they gated 3 of them behind event items. event items were really bad mechanics cause outside of japan it was such a pain in the ass to get them. manaphy was a massive pain in the ass even though pokemon ranger was fun.
after that they started just having the dude in the pokemart hand them to you after you download them to your cartridge which i feel is bad. they literally removed the potential for gameplay and content. Magearna was such a massive fuckup to me. (i know someone is gonna point to mew and celebi) but at least both of those games were buggy enough that the player can opt to overcome the bad design.
just look at how many of these in later generations were put into the "giveaways" category.
https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Event_Pokémon#Event-exclusive_Pok.C3.A9mon_species
i'd rather they go back to putting actually events in the game you can trigger whenever you wanted.
i lost most of my interest in competitive over a decade ago but it always felt more like a mini TCG than the pet raising simulator it was intended to be
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diamond/pearl is literal trash, its the worst gen and it's not even close lol
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On November 17 2017 22:57 VayneAuthority wrote:
diamond/pearl is literal trash, its the worst gen and it's not even close lol
Dem fightin words.
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I think the physical/special split and amount of memorization is being overblown here. If you're really into competitive pokemon, there's only 1 or 2 in each category for each type that really matters, and you should be able to catch on pretty quickly.
The real criticism should be that it's such a legacy heavy game at this point. I really hate pokebank, not because I don't understand the old gen pokemon, but it's just such a grind having to build teams around all the old bullshit with new tricks every generation. It's got to be so much worse for people that are just starting to play and dieing to this stuff.
Pokemon like Heatran should just be deleted from competitive play forever, as it has had more than enough time in the sun.
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I think the focus on competitive battling is overlooking the fact that the majority of pokemon players don't know shit about EV, IVs, etc.
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Yeah I feel like competitive Pokemon issues only applies to a miniscule fraction of the people who buy the games.
I don't have Pokemon bank, never felt a need for it.
What bugged me most about pokemon games is the decrease in difficulty. I think it's Gens 5/6 where gym leaders are suddenly capped at 3 pokemon each, even the 8th gym leader like come on... And elite 4 only has 4 pokemon, you can beat them in any order. You no longer lose a big chunk of cash upon losing, etc.
That really annoyed me.
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I don't like that they make people pay for pokebank. I don't see a need for it to be an online service and am not happy about shelling out another what... $5 to move my living dex from my 3DS to my Switch for gen8.
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These people don't really care about physical/special moves either. Pretty much none of the pokemon mechanics matter except for type effectiveness at a casual level. If you just want to go around catching pokemon casually, and don't care about competitive, why do you even care about these mechanics that they go out of their way to hide from you?
As of Gen 6, you definitely do not need memory editing to play competitive pokemon, other than legendaries arguably. I've played legit since Gen 5, and it's only gotten easier since then.
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Part of what got me back to Pokemon is the ease of it. I don't play competitive either but the obsessive in me still like to breed Pokemon with good IV/EV spreads when it's not too difficult to do so.
I'm playing one of the Gen 3 remakes right now. I don't think I can go back to the earliest gens at all. There are just too many QoL improvements in the new games that I actually enjoy. I just don't seem to be as big on nostalgia as other people.
Gen 4 D/P era does seem to have the strongest, most well rounded starters of any era. And Staraptor is probably the strongest available early bird pokemon in the series. The games have also suffered from a busted experience curve ever since they made exp share a key item. They never made an adjustment to progression based on it. It's just way too easy to overlevel everything now.
My biggest gripe in the games currently is that there is no endgame that makes use of all the legendary/mythical pokemon I have amassed. I've gotten a lot of them over the past year but they are just gathering dust in pokemon bank. Would be nice if there is a battle tree that allows, for example, 6 pokemon each with 2 of them allowed to be legendary.
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On November 17 2017 22:57 VayneAuthority wrote:
diamond/pearl is literal trash, its the worst gen and it's not even close lol
That's how I feel about B/W honestly
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On November 17 2017 22:52 Frolossus wrote:
the first system wasn't perfect but at least it had a lower spread so it was less impactful on your pokemon.
Frolo pls
The two systems have the same impact, because the Gen 1 IV values are doubled in the final formula--in gen 1/2 it's (Base + IV) x 2 with IV being a number between 0 and 15, while in gen 3+ it's Base x 2 + IV with IV being a number between 0 and 31. The difference is near-meaningless from a functional perspective, the gen 1/2 is basically like the gen 3+ system if the gen 3+ system could only generate even numbers.
On November 17 2017 22:52 Frolossus wrote:
phys special split might be intuitive but i have two problems with it. one is that it basically split every damage move in two and most of the time there isn't enough to distinguish them from each other. the second is that there is nothing wrong with having relatively bad moves to gate progression. they don't let you start with surf and earthquake right away for a similar reason. i think i would have rather seen them collapse the stats into a single damage type and removing some complexity going forward instead of doubling down on the split.
Having only a single offensive and defensive stat would decrease complexity to a trivial level. Having both "physical" and "magical" attacks and defenses is good, and creates problems you can tackle from different angles. For example, figuring out in gen 1 that Ember was actually okay and Confusion was actually quite good against Brock's rock type Pokemon even with type disadvantage/neutrality because they have good defense but bad special.
The increasing homogeneity of moves doesn't have to do with the physical and special split, but more to do with movelist bloat where each gen keeps adding functionally similar moves. Fire Punch and Flamethrower being functionally distinct is good, the problem is the further addition of Fiery Dance, Fire Pledge, Flame Burst, Heat Wave, Lava Plume, Mystical Fire, etc. bloats the move pool to unacceptable levels, with all of these moves being "80-ish power Special Fire move with random minor upside". That can't really be blamed on the Phys/Spec split because they were already adding these kinds of redundant moves in gen 2 and 3. The split actually served to make many of these moves more distinct (e.g. the aforementioned Fire Punch and Flamethrower), they just continued to add even more of them.
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I am okay with chansey being the best pokemon in the game.
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On November 18 2017 04:27 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2017 22:52 Frolossus wrote:
the first system wasn't perfect but at least it had a lower spread so it was less impactful on your pokemon. Frolo pls The two systems have the same impact, because the Gen 1 IV values are doubled in the final formula--in gen 1/2 it's (Base + IV) x 2 with IV being a number between 0 and 15, while in gen 3+ it's Base x 2 + IV with IV being a number between 0 and 31. The difference is near-meaningless from a functional perspective, the gen 1/2 is basically like the gen 3+ system if the gen 3+ system could only generate even numbers. Show nested quote +On November 17 2017 22:52 Frolossus wrote:
phys special split might be intuitive but i have two problems with it. one is that it basically split every damage move in two and most of the time there isn't enough to distinguish them from each other. the second is that there is nothing wrong with having relatively bad moves to gate progression. they don't let you start with surf and earthquake right away for a similar reason. i think i would have rather seen them collapse the stats into a single damage type and removing some complexity going forward instead of doubling down on the split. Having only a single offensive and defensive stat would decrease complexity to a trivial level. Having both "physical" and "magical" attacks and defenses is good, and creates problems you can tackle from different angles. For example, figuring out in gen 1 that Ember was actually okay and Confusion was actually quite good against Brock's rock type Pokemon even with type disadvantage/neutrality because they have good defense but bad special. The increasing homogeneity of moves doesn't have to do with the physical and special split, but more to do with movelist bloat where each gen keeps adding functionally similar moves. Fire Punch and Flamethrower being functionally distinct is good, the problem is the further addition of Fiery Dance, Fire Pledge, Flame Burst, Heat Wave, Lava Plume, Mystical Fire, etc. bloats the move pool to unacceptable levels, with all of these moves being "80-ish power Special Fire move with random minor upside". That can't really be blamed on the Phys/Spec split because they were already adding these kinds of redundant moves in gen 2 and 3. The split actually served to make many of these moves more distinct (e.g. the aforementioned Fire Punch and Flamethrower), they just continued to add even more of them.
i think the IV system has always been a terrible mess and instead of building further on top of it they needed to re-evaluate and come up with a better solution for the problem of making pokemon feel unique. it was never great but i feel that it has gotten worse now that things like natures and ability types have to stack with of it for ideal pokemon. the current state of the system has basically devolved into eugenics for fake monsters
before you just had 80ish power fire moves. now you have to have 80ish power physical AND special moves that all do roughly the same thing but appeal to a slightly different context. i feel like the movepool explosion doesn't justify the minimal gains of the system. maybe part of the problem is the restriction to only having 4 slots limits the ability to make moves that fill particular niches.
speaking of moves why was stealth rocks allowed to exist the way it has for 10 years?
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On November 18 2017 08:45 Frolossus wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2017 04:27 TheYango wrote:On November 17 2017 22:52 Frolossus wrote:
the first system wasn't perfect but at least it had a lower spread so it was less impactful on your pokemon. Frolo pls The two systems have the same impact, because the Gen 1 IV values are doubled in the final formula--in gen 1/2 it's (Base + IV) x 2 with IV being a number between 0 and 15, while in gen 3+ it's Base x 2 + IV with IV being a number between 0 and 31. The difference is near-meaningless from a functional perspective, the gen 1/2 is basically like the gen 3+ system if the gen 3+ system could only generate even numbers. On November 17 2017 22:52 Frolossus wrote:
phys special split might be intuitive but i have two problems with it. one is that it basically split every damage move in two and most of the time there isn't enough to distinguish them from each other. the second is that there is nothing wrong with having relatively bad moves to gate progression. they don't let you start with surf and earthquake right away for a similar reason. i think i would have rather seen them collapse the stats into a single damage type and removing some complexity going forward instead of doubling down on the split. Having only a single offensive and defensive stat would decrease complexity to a trivial level. Having both "physical" and "magical" attacks and defenses is good, and creates problems you can tackle from different angles. For example, figuring out in gen 1 that Ember was actually okay and Confusion was actually quite good against Brock's rock type Pokemon even with type disadvantage/neutrality because they have good defense but bad special. The increasing homogeneity of moves doesn't have to do with the physical and special split, but more to do with movelist bloat where each gen keeps adding functionally similar moves. Fire Punch and Flamethrower being functionally distinct is good, the problem is the further addition of Fiery Dance, Fire Pledge, Flame Burst, Heat Wave, Lava Plume, Mystical Fire, etc. bloats the move pool to unacceptable levels, with all of these moves being "80-ish power Special Fire move with random minor upside". That can't really be blamed on the Phys/Spec split because they were already adding these kinds of redundant moves in gen 2 and 3. The split actually served to make many of these moves more distinct (e.g. the aforementioned Fire Punch and Flamethrower), they just continued to add even more of them. i think the IV system has always been a terrible mess and instead of building further on top of it they needed to re-evaluate and come up with a better solution for the problem of making pokemon feel unique. it was never great but i feel that it has gotten worse now that things like natures and ability types have to stack with of it for ideal pokemon. the current state of the system has basically devolved into eugenics for fake monsters before you just had 80ish power fire moves. now you have to have 80ish power physical AND special moves that all do roughly the same thing but appeal to a slightly different context. i feel like the movepool explosion doesn't justify the minimal gains of the system. maybe part of the problem is the restriction to only having 4 slots limits the ability to make moves that fill particular niches. speaking of moves why was stealth rocks allowed to exist the way it has for 10 years?
Why do pokemon parameters need to be a point where each individuals pokemon is unique? Competitively speaking, there's always going to be an optimal set of stats that people go for. My only issue with ivs is that only zero and 31 ivs matter and a couple hidden power combinations, but it's such a moot point that it's not really worth stressing out over.
Nature's and moves actually do a lot to make people's pokemon unique. Having to choose one stat to augment and another to detriment, as well as what 4 moves gives you more ways to define what role your pokemon plays on your team.
Stealth rock's properties hasn't changed, but it's use has evolved as the game has added so many ways to play around and set it up. It's one of the defining moves of the game and Nintendo has definitely realized this.
All these things if simplified or removed wouldn't really make the game better. While there is a lot of complexity and a some things that may be extraneous, a good lot of it is healthy and makes competitive pokemon continuously playable. If you don't want to play competitively, you can ignore these things and it wouldn't affect your experience at all.
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The fact that you can switch in a double weak to rock poke and lose half your life is fucking stupid and who ever made the move and thought "yeah, that's a good idea." should be demoted.
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Lots of things do half a pokemon's health, or even kills them 100 percent. It's kind of arbitrary to draw the line on switching, which is already supposed to be a risky option. I wouldn't be bothered if they toned it down to like 35 or 40 percent, but in practice, it has shown to be not a big issue, and pokemon like volcarona and charizard are still quite playable.
Casting stealth rock isn't free either and can be quite risky, especially when their turn can be canceled in so many ways. It also takes a full move slot, which doesn't always play in your favor against some teams.
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EPT
