Nintendo Switch Thread - Page 68

On November 18 2017 19:06 Frolossus wrote:
the problem with competitive is how it doesn't match the idea of pokemon being a monster raising sim at all. like i said before it feels like a TCG instead.

On November 18 2017 19:19 TheYango wrote:

What's wrong with that? Competitive Pokemon is what the competitive community wants it to be (and they honestly have more say over how competitive play "feels" than the the game designers do in many ways given how heavily competitive Pokemon is curated by rulesets), and that's fine.

Given how far Showdown developed as the primary means to play/practice competitive, most of the competitive community isn't interested in "monster raising sim" aspect of Pokemon anyway. Most competitive players would rather have complete fine-tuned control over their Pokemon down to the numerical IV/EV level, and for years competitive teams were generated with cheat devices. It's only really the addition of improved player control of various elements of breeding and training that allowed some crossover between the competitive and breeding subgroups of the fanbase.

On November 18 2017 19:34 Frolossus wrote:
for example if players couldn't see or control any of their stat rolls then battling would be much more reactive and engaging.

On November 18 2017 19:48 TheYango wrote:

None of the things we're talking about *are* ever shown to the player, nor are they given direct control of any of them. All the information we have available is because everything about the games was reverse-engineered, and Nintendo only half-gave us ways to alter them via breeding/alternatives to training only after the cat was out of the bag.

Every competitive community is always going to strive to get as much information out of the system as possible. Even if the game didn't show you your core stats and their growth was totally randomized rather than being controlled by EVs, then hackers would have reverse-engineered the pseudorandom number generation used to generate those values and control them. People were already changing their DS clocks to generate 31-IV mons in Gens 4-5 because the community reverse-engineered how IVs are generated. There isn't really any amount of information hiding you could do that would prevent people from figuring it out and utilizing it to gain an advantage in competitive play.

On November 18 2017 19:53 Frolossus wrote:
have a server randomly assign stat rolls within a range every time you queue up for a match. problem solved and the game becomes interesting again. also don't display hp number below the bar

this sort of game would actually reward you for raising a set of pokemon because all of the min-maxing goes completely out the window

On November 18 2017 19:59 TheYango wrote:

That doesn't throw min-maxing out the window at all. It just turns deterministic outcomes into probabilistic ones based on the roll ranges. The best choices are still the best choices, they just have a chance to fail that the player has to filter out in their decision making.

On November 18 2017 20:02 Frolossus wrote:
which is more engaging gameplay for the player and doesn't force them to discard all of their terrible pokemon.

also a battle factory-styled limited format would be really cool as an alternative mode.

On November 18 2017 20:13 TheYango wrote:

I don't think probabilistic hidden-information games are inherently more engaging than deterministic ones. It's just a design choice, what you're describing isn't objectively better. Probabilistic games have their upsides (determining optimal lines of play is generally more complex due to the nature of hidden information) but also their downsides (they're subject to randomness of outcomes, which are generally not viewed favorably in competitive games).

You also have to accommodate the fact that Pokemon is a lot of different things to a lot of different people. While the competitive player would like his "bad" Pokemon's stats to not matter, the breeder wants the perfect Pokemon he's bred to have value for his time investment to feel rewarding. If breeding 31-IV Pokemon has no value to anyone because competitive play re-randomizes stats anyway, that makes the experience less satisfying for the breeder. Bridging the gap between breeding and competitive play in recent gens has just made things better for everyone, because for the competitive player, the process of getting Pokemon he wants has become more painless, while for the breeder, there's more recognition for the product of his effort because even though it's easier to breed perfect Pokemon, there's more people interested in obtaining them legitimately.

On November 17 2017 08:13 Terranasaur wrote:


I think all the "dumbing down" has been positive. Its nice to be able to appraise and breed Pokemon without all the hassle from previous gens. The gameplay from SM is lightyears ahead of RBY

On November 20 2017 07:05 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Wow the Pro controller is heavy =/

On November 21 2017 04:40 [Phantom] wrote:
Any multiplayer game that use just the joycons?

Debating wether to buy a switch or not...I'd love to play it, already played Zelda on WiiU so the only big game would be Odyssey. Currently it's about 320 dollars where I live when usually it's about 550 dollars...It's my country's blackfriday. Unfortunately I don't have a lot of money currently... But if i don't but it now i'll probably never buy it..not sure...I alread have a game though, a friend gifted me the Rabbids one as he though I already had a switch.