Oh Come On! That's Not Even Fair... · 9:54am Jan 10th, 2013
Apologies as this has nothing to do with my fics, or even ponies at all, so if that's all you're here for feel free to leave. Mostly only posting this so that the previous downer mood is off my front page.
Anyway...
So, I finally managed to kick the Pokémon habit by skipping Black2 & White2, and Nintendo has to go and make me want to go running back for more with a single announcement.
I mean seriously, fully 3D battles on a handheld system; yes please (even if the buggers will still most likely just dance in place and scarcely interact even when nominally smashing into each other). Also the sheer expansiveness of those environments and interactive movements by which the player avatar navigates them... I am literally giddy with anticipation.
The only bad thing here is that I'm just not sure actually I want to get back into this series. As I said I only just managed to crawl out, and if I go back now it will feel like such a lack of commitment, plus the hole in my game catalogue from skipping B2&W2 will no doubt niggle at my OCD completionist mentality.
I guess going into my favor for holding resolute in my abstinence is that none of the three new starters impresses me all that much just yet... maybe that fire one a littel, and the big legendries look kinda cool, plus that 3D dratini that appears for all of one second or so is made of adorableness, and... OH, GOD! They are already worming their way back into my brain.
It's just not fair, I tell you. 
I guess I'm lucky I don't like Pokemon in the first place, eh?
But seriously. It's about cockfighting with magical, semi-sentient creatures. If you simply remind yourself of that fact, maybe you'll have less trouble avoiding the pull? Idk if that helps.
696380
Sorry not buying it. I don't fall for the people who try to spin negative subtexts in MLP and that goes just the same for Pokémon. These aren't just semi-sentient animals that I poach from the wild to lock inside dark cages and only let out to fight for my depraved amusement. There are no masters and slaves; these are my friends and partners on a grand journey of heroic discovery and self-realization.
So you can take your cynicism to the tyrant queen of the eternal Solar Empire and shove it straight up Molestia's royal plot... and while you're at it go down to Sugar Cube Corner; I hear Miss Pinkamena is looking for
ingredientsassistants to help her bake some cupcakes....
696390 Still cockfighting. And that's not even me consciously trying to give it a negative spin, that's just what it looks like to me.
To each their own.
Also, you misspelled 'Ingredients.'
696395
Canonical Fact: One of the main reasons wild Pokémon attack wandering trainers is because they want to test their own skill; if they win they prove they don't need a trainer, while if they lose they pledge loyalty to that trainer in hopes of becoming as strong as that trainer's other Pokémon. This is an alien mind set and moral frame of reference we are talking about. The Pokémon that get caught by trainers actually enjoy competing in these so-called "cockfights". Besides, in the wild Pokémon actually kill and eat each other (also a canon fact), while the trained ones compete in something more akin to regulated martial arts sparing where there are rules and the fight ends after one opponent proves a decisive edge.
Pokémon battles have about as much to do with cockfighting as cutie marks have to do with slave branding and cast systems. Not that I'm really trying to convince you to take up a half-dozen Pokéballs and try it for yourself, I just refuse to let anyone ignorantly decry it as anything like such immoral real world activates on account of only having a superficial understanding of the subject matter.
I got out of wow back in 05 thinkin' it was dying, wished I'd at least stayed in for burning crusade. Get back into it and have fun but obviously limit yourself.
I still say you shouldn't have skipped Black2/White2!! The Join Avenue is AMAZING! The Flower Shop in there can sell those EV reducing berries you complain about not having (once per day you can buy 4 of them for a price, each shop ends up carrying three of them), as well as plenty of useful berries like Sitrus and LEPPA! The Mart type store carries Ether, PP Up and massive packs of potions and stuff(dozens of Calcium? Dozens of X Attack? 48 Moo Moo Milk or Water? 36 Hyper Potion? They got 'em!). But more interestingly is the Dojo and Restaurant types of stores, where you can trade money for levels and EV training! I've trained more than one Pokémon by simply buying all the EV I need. You can check if you reached maximum EV by calling up Bianca on the X-Transceiver.
You think you might need money? Go do some movies at Pokéstar Studio! If you do well your fans will give you stuff like Berry Juice, Lava Cookie, RageCandyBar and Old Gateau, then you can sell the stuff out to the food maniac for a good price. The mart also has 'souvenir sets' of Old Gateau for cheap, and you can buy Castelian Cones once per day now (I got like over 200 of them by the time I stopped :p) and each of those cones cost you 100 P but sells for 2000 at the food maniac.
Then once you've trained your Pokémon at the Join Avenue take them to the Pokemon World Tournament, or PWT to take on Gym Leaders from every single region, or, eventually, every oher champion out there! This is a huge challenge because the Champions have perfectly designed EV and IV!
If oyu think Pokémon is usually too easy, find a friend who completed Black2 and get hold of the Challenge Key! Once activated in your game, every opponent will become stronger and smarter!
I really really hope they don't drop any of the new development from Black2/White2, I'm still annoyed we didn't get to keep out traveling companion from HGSS :/
696395>>696408 Lazarus is obviously part of Team Plasma!
697287
Yes, thank you so very much for helping me second guess my decision to try and kick the habit all the more so, and tempting me to crawl out my door and down to the store to get copies right this instant.
Though at the same time you also helped remind me of some of the reasons I quit (even if only indirectly), by giving out a giant list of all the best stuff in B2&W2 which while greatly mitigating the problems driving me away from the series also just highlight that all those complaints existed in the first place. Most notably EV training, or rather the arbitrary EV limit which turned training from a basic RPG grind into a nightmarish process of counting invisible numbers and even more exacting additional meta gaming math to avoid wasting a single point.
...so maybe I'll stand strong against X&Y after all.
696408 Okay, that does sound a little bit better, but I still don't think it's for me.
697287 Team Plasma? Whaa?
698097
Team Plasma was the enemy faction in Black & White. Their ostensive goal was to liberate all Pokémon from the oppression of trainers. In practice though only their leader truly believed in and practiced what he preached, while most of the rest were a group of hypocritical thugs who stole other peoples Pokémon, while still using Pokémon themselves in the process. A few saw it all as a necessary evil, and that once all Pokémon were free they'd release their own as well, but most seemed to see themselves as the exception to the idea that all trainers were cruel and uncaring slave drivers. Still, the scary thing is that despite their dubious tactics they still had a lot of civilian NPCs questioning whether any of the team's message of liberation might actually be valid.
Again, not trying to convince you to play Pokémon if it's not your cup of tea, but if you ever did decide to give it a try, I would highly recommend Black or White as the story of those games really explores the underlying motives and morality of the series as whole.
699020 Huh.
I know, and alright!
Hey. Fun fact.
EV grinding is only necessary if you're wanting to play at tournament level.
If you're just playing the game, or competing among friends, it doesn't matter. So it's a grind you choose.
Just putting that out there.
PS White 2 is amazing so far.
PPS: I give no fucks about gen 6 until it's in my grubby little hands. I just like the idea of pulling you back into the fold.
701047
That's sort of the problem.
I know it shouldn't matter to me, unfortunately there is a reason why Twilight Sparkle is pretty much the pony I most associate with on a personal level. That is to say, I've got a bit of an OCD issue that'll niggle incessantly at me if I'm not doing everything absolutely perfectly (which extends to a lot more than just EV training, but I actually am able to largely enjoy the rest of my madness).
Even though I've got pretty much zero interest in competitive Pokémon battle (or rather I'm not willing to make the commitment to actually be good at it), I still find myself compelled to play the game like I did. The mere fact that all these indivisible numbers exist compels me to want to keep them tightly ordered. This puts me in an awkward personal dilemma, the burden of keeping track of such things reduces my enjoyment of the game, but ignoring them would also reduce my enjoyment of the game, which creates a lose/lose scenario where either choice is the wrong choice. Granted, quitting entirely is in its own way also a wrong choice, but at least it was a wrong choice whereby I freed time to spend on other games that don't force me into such a dilemma. This is why I was somewhat relived (even if not happy) when B2&W2 being two games instead of one, as had been the trend with all previous generations, finally screwed with my OCD enough for me to draw a line and just be done with it all.
So overall... well, I'm hesitant to go back in. Sure I know it will start out fun and carefree, that I'll be able to pretend none of my problems exist, but inevitably the OCD will creep back in (probably between the 4th and 6th gyms), until the burned of my needless perfectionism causes all my enthusiasm to peter out during the prep for the elite four. I've been down this road before, and I'm just not sure I'm up for it again... though I am sorely, sorely tempted to just give into temptation anyway, to just enjoy the ride while it lasts, heedless to the likely long term disappointment.
.........
Which all sounds a lot more defeatist grim than it really is. I really do enjoy Pokémon and want to play the games, I've just got personal issues that make it all more difficult then it should be.
One of us, one of us....
697287 701047
Apologies, but I'm feeling ranty. Just feel free to leave now, and ignore all the bellow.
I enjoy Extra Credits, and their latest video sort of touches on a concept that is another part of why I really hate EVs in the G3+ games; it's a mechanic that adds complexity without meaningfully improving the depth of the playing experience.
Oh sure, it theoretically creates a greater variety of options, but in practice the optimal strategy is usually just to max out a Pokémon's two best stats, leaving them just as good at the things they were always good at. The sweepers are still just as fast and hit just as hard, while the tanks are still just as bulky. Worse still though, is that this focus only further marginalized the Pokémon with balanced stats as now it's even harder to perform well in multiple roles. Mixed sweepers don't really work anymore, while all but the most specialized tanks were always more reliant on three states to begin with. As for bulky sweepers or aggressive tanks, might as well write them out of the mix completely.
Yes, there are still a few exceptions, and I know that at the highest competitive levels there's very complex math about exactly how much attack one needs to 1HKO specific threats, or how much speed guaranties a first strike, and other stuff like that, but it only further increases the gap between the veterans and the newbs. There was already enough and more meaningful variety of play with team composition, move sets, and equipable items (not to mention the whole strategy involved in out guessing what action your opponent will take each round). We never needed an invisible variable added to the system that makes it possible to screw up at the level grinding phase.
Sure there were always IVs and those tended to screw over players that didn't know about them, but at least once you did learn about them it was a simple matter to check which of your mons had viable stats. With the new EV limits it became basically impossible to retroactively determine if a given mon has crappy stats because it was caught with poor IVs or if it just has poor EV training. Nintedno might have introduced ways to mitigate the problem, like EV reducing berries and NPC that will tell you if a mon is maxed out or what it's best stats are, but that doesn't change the fact that it's problem which never needed to exist in the first place.
717732 At the very least there is certainly no reason to keep those values hidden from the players anymore. We know they are there, give us a damn option to view them instead of keeping us in the dark about it.
718552
Yeah, making the numbers visible would help, though it would also make the status screen a fair amount more congested. It also wouldn't fix the problem that with the way EVs are gained Pokémon used to complete the story mode would still end up with a mostly random hodgepodge of stat growth, though at least ever since Emerald the anti-EV berries make it possible to correct that later on (scarcity of those berries in B&W aside). More importantly though, when actually engaged in focused training, one wouldn't need to keep a separate notebook to record the effort distribution -- which is a real pain for an ostensibly mobile game that should be playable in short sittings here and there while on the go.
719662 Maybe you could only see them at a specific location in the game instead of the status screen. Maybe a machine in the Pokemon Center?
On one hand the EV add depth to the battle system and leveling, but on the other hand anything to make it more visible or even less automatic would be overly too complicated for the kids playing the game :/
719782
I'd prefer something always on hand, like a Pokétch utility, but a function of the CPU at every Pokémon Center wouldn't be too bad. Throw in a set of six specialized training zones where all the wild Pokemon in each respective area contribute to the growth of only the corresponding stat and then the EV limitation would be something resembling tolerable.
As for added depth though, I still dispute that. Any depth the EV cutoff adds exists only at the highest competitive levels, and even there it's still mostly about pumping up a Pokémon's two highest stats, making the glass-cannons glassier and the tanks less able to do anything but stall. A scant few Pokémon have stat distribution that afford multiple potential builds, but that just creates a blind guessing game since any two Pokémon of the same species will still look identical regardless of build. That's not depth, it's pigeonholing and confusion.
G1&2 did just fine letting players maxout EVs on all their stats (and by fighting any Pokémon, not just hunting for specific ones that hand out the desired stat growth). G3 already had plenty of other legitimate depth increasing mechanics with the addition of natures and abilities. There was no need to enforce a cap that cut the total number of effective EVs a Pokémon could acquire by 2/3.
719943 Training grounds would be a great idea. Especially if the Pokémon in there would raise in level with you (and some NPC trainers could show up once in a while). It's a concept I myself thought about before. I would place them in out of the way sector of the game to force players to explore all the nooks and cranny of the map and have a NPC trainer you need to beat before entering the place.
EV themselves add depth but I agree the cap might be too tight. While keeping the individual stat max, the overall cap should be slightly higher. However I dispute the claim that all builds are just two maxed out stats. There are some builds out there that recquire a more complex EV spread.
Thing is, if you let players max ALL their stats, then EV doesn't matter because everyone will max out all their stats, then it's just a game of chance with IV and a smaller subset of Pokémons, those with the best stats, will be playable.
719958
Added complexity, yes, but as per the more recent video link I posted that's not the same as added depth. The two are inseparably related concepts, but not indistinguishable, and the best games should always strive to achieve the maximum of the latter with the minimum of the former. Elemental rock/paper/scissors plus variable move sets already created a great amount of depth from the start, and was greatly improved upon by the addition of abilities.
Plus I still hold that the few instances where the EV cap creates any meaningful diversity are few far between and not worth the effort. Furthermore, the math is so convoluted and tied up in meta-play that it really only becomes viable at the highest levels of competitive play, existing well outside the average player experience.
That's still by and far the way things are anyway. All the EV cap accomplishes is to further increase the gap between any given Pokémon's high and low stats, making the specialists more specialized, and the generalists harder to manage at all.
600, if there is to be a cap it should be the value of a full round of 10 of each vitamin.
719978 Or maybe the cap on each individual stat needs to be lower? And end in a multiple of 4. So that the differene between perfect EV and mismatched EV isn't as big?
Anyway on a somewhat different note, did you ever play either of the Monster Rancher Advance games?
732642
Nope