Pokemon S ☀ N & M 🌙 ON

King of Posters
61

How do you balance the pokemon games in single player contexts now anyway? I can understand with the online virtual battlers that you have instant access to all fully grown pokemon and can strategize from there, but in single player campaigns you’re given a slowly progressing access to mons with limited movesets that you can only expand through effort and the available means to level them up. Adding to that is the ability to trade or transfer pokemon from earlier games with entirely different region designs, as well as an even broader ability to trade via wifi, and at that point it’s basically a sandbox game. It’s hilarious that the devs even care enough to try balancing it.

Come to think of it, gen six constantly loads you up with super pokemon, so maybe they have just made it all easy in anticipation of players transferring their teams over.

hey guys have I mentioned that diamond and pearl were good

62

I mean, one way is to have the game dynamically set the lvl of the pokes that you encounter based on the lvl of the pokes in your party. But im 90% sure that Nintendo doesnt do anything like that.

One way they do do it is by introducing obstacles that the game forces you to be at a certain skill level to overcome.

eg those shrubs that you need cut for right? Like, cutting the shrubs down gives you access to areas with higher lvl wild pikmins, but in order to get the cut TM in the first place you have to have been good enough to defeat some gym leader, so…

63

Yeah, I suppose that counts. It’s not the most elegant answer, but it’s something.

64

Well, I’m just talking about balancing the RPS type relationships, which is a delicate (especially while maintaining the metaphors of “Fire” and “Rock,” etc.) but contained and accessible task.

There hasn’t actually been consistent porting options between generations of pokemon, so it’s not as if they’re struggling to reconcile twenty years of legacy schema. They remade the old games partially to deal with this issue. (They applied Abilities to the 'mon in the remakes, so it was easier to trade them forward, right?)

Anyway, they clearly have some concerns about type balancing because they added the Fairy typing in the last generation, specifically to nerf Dragons and maybe to nerf Dark a bit as well.

Also, the Pokemon Company expends a pretty significant amount of resources in hyping up their official tournaments which are highly competitive and have rules designed to keep them competitive (nearly all legendaries are banned, each 'mon must have a unique item, etc.)

Tournaments aside, I think Game Freak probably cares about competitive battling being an overall fun experiences and not feeling “broken” overall. Without Fairies, the only way to take down a pure Dragon type is with an Ice move. Ice 'mon are not resistant to Dragons, though, and they’re overall very frail. So the better option is to pack Ice moves on a bunch of non-ice 'mon. But if you make your whole team Dragon, you still stand a good chance of getting the opportunity of dominating. Blah blah blah. It seems like the saw a legitimate cross-generational balance issue and decided to fix it.

In second generation, I think they basically added Steel, Ice, and Dark because they thought new types were a neat new feature for a sequel. But Dark also served to nerf psychics (in addition to splitting the Special stat).

So yeah: it’s probably not a goal of theirs to have a completely balanced type system, but I think it’s a reasonable priority. Basing the game on an unbalanced RPS system actually creates a chain reaction of balancing issues in other aspects of the battle system, (such as making sure Electric types have limited Physical Attack options, keeping Psychic moves weak, nerfing a particular 'mon, because type alone makes it too formidable). Theses nerfs can feel very tacked-on and artificial–as if they’re fighting uphill against the balancing issue at the root of their system.

Balancing every aspect of the game would be a monumental task to do retroactively, but that’s not what I’m putting forward. Balancing the RPS now would definitely cause some ripple effect that would need to be accounted for. But I think they’d be easily predictable, and the criteria that you need to balance are pretty limited.

Bottom line: of course the game’s going to be unbalanced in every other aspect, and they don’t actually care that much about the type RPS. But it’s perplexing to look at the most basic aspect of their system and think, “Why did you make Scissors weak to Rock and Scissors?”

65

Oh, I don’t expect them to do this or care if they do.

It’s a JRPG, so it’s based around the idea that you can advance through grinding, rather than skill/tactics. That’s supposed to be part of the appeal.

Plus the legendaries are broken by design.

But ruby’s right: a simple way to try to balance a JRPG (at least somewhat) is to tie enemy level to the player’s level. FFT, the US version of Lufia: SSS for the PSX, and some other games do this. But yeah: the game design purpose of the badges (and pokemon disobeying you if you over-level them before getting a certain badge) is to try to regulate your play experience. I’m sure they do other things too, but overall the games were seemingly designed to be broken from the first and pick weird times to make concessions to not being broken.

You…you know I hate those games, right?

66

Bighead i dig your poketulpa thread and your enthusiasm for the competitive scene but it is so hilariously alien to my experience of/approach to the games. Not saying that to dampen your flame i just find it amusing/bemusing. ive always gone for 'mons that were interesting from a lore/design angle (Cubone is my all-time favorite and im pretty sure hes considered “low-tier”). That my speak more to my approach to games in general though. i find the world of Soulsborne or Smashbros PVP just as foreign. (that smash article rubyquartz linked is v. good, as i get older i respect the idea of making games accessible and lowering the barrier to entry.)

i think the only time ive ever won any of the handful of matches ive done in my life was this one time in high school, where one of my besties & i were both playing through Blue on our OG GBs. we met up after the second gym and i brought my old 4-way link cable to school (which i had mostly used to trade stuff to myself). the match started at the end of our film class and progressed until we were outside hanging out on the corner waiting for our parents to pick us up, with all our friends gathered 'round and cheering us on. it was a close match, he swept most of my team with his Gyarados but i beat it with my secret weapon Sandslash~

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67

i owned Pearl for awhile, i think i liked it ok? but it was wayyyy tooooo slowwwww!! Platinum improved on that but then i entered abject poverty and had to sell it :frowning:
dont think i got more than 4 badges on either cart so i never got much of a sense for how those ones were designed…

68

Yeah i thought that the way to play pokemon games was to basically Be Ash, shepherding your cute starter mon into its final evolution, also learn a few life lessons along the way, face victory and loss both with equal humility etc

Theres nothing wrong with number crunching either…but i get the impression that nintendo only ever makes grudging concessions to ‘hardcore’ gamers and is certainly reluctant to actively court them.

69

not to bring this back to smash but the huge melee competitive scene exists despite nintendo what with it not allowing the game at evo because of streaming issues and its slowing down of brawl after the super speed of melee, so this is definitely true

not that that’s a bad thing tho

70

yes, that’s the joke. I’m the only person who loved D/P (let alone had a religious experience with it)

71

I love Platinum

DP are ok

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72

Yeah, I think the games are more about the single player experience and that that experience is about discovery and fun and bonding with 'Mon based on appearance, etc. I mean, you can beat the game with any 'Mon if you level enough, and when you fight online by official channels, most people won’t be Max level and EV/IV optimized.

And that’s totally cool–I’m not talking about taking that away or saying that that’s a stupid way to play or whatever.

I’m really just griping into the ether. Balancing the RPS seems like such an obvious house cleaning thing to do, and it would take away any of the fun you guys are talking about.

I think Game Freak’s ultimate goal is to make a fun kids’ game, and they only make enough basic system tweaks to keep it fairly fun. I get it, it’s just that one of my favorite games would be much improved if they did some work on their foundation.

73

All of your reasons for wanting the numbers to be rebalanced are I’m sure entirely valid. But including the basic spatial element of diagonal walking is also an obvious thing to do, which Nintendo/gamefreaks have consistently refrained from doing until, like, some zen oracle, communicating via patterns of sakura petals gently wafting in the spring breeze, told them to.

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74

why do people want diagonal walking? it always seems to come up when people talk about pokemon but i don’t understand how it adds anything to the game.

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I don’t believe you.

76

i agree

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time saving, and people irl can walk on non-orthogonal lines too.

78

but … the game should be designed around the actions it allows.

the last pkmn i played (white) seemed to be fine without diagonal movement.

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79

Zelda on GB had 8-way walking, Pokemon could’ve too. Wish it had it from the beginning; could’ve saved me a lot of time bumping into walls.

80

yeah the games have really been designed around these rigid grids, dungeons in particular - like dragon quest 1, pretty explicitly. i think this is a weird line to take! not that there shouldn’t be freer movement in the next game or whatever, but it’s not like it’s ever been missing. and you can already move freely on rollerblades (and the bike too?) in x and y, anyway!

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