Unpopular opinions

[woodgoldtwo]

Admittedly, this point is also a consequence of them making all these stylish balls and then only giving you 1-2 with no option to ever buy more; at the very least I think there should be a post-game option for acquiring stuff like the Fast Ball, Moon Ball, etc. outside of the Dex reward system.

You can actually get more of them!
The Porto Marinada auction sometimes has one available and the albeit DLC exclusive Item Printer’s Poke Ball lottery event can give you more as well

 

[ScraftyIsTheBest]

Just going to say it: I think Pokemon should nix the traditional method of catching Legendaries altogether and model future encounters off the battles to catch Ogerpon and Bloodmoon and the like.

Now that I'm working my way through the Indigo Disk Legendaries, I've come to question what the low catch rates of Legendaries really adds to the game. By the point you get to encounter most Legendary Pokemon, you should already have a high-level team and enough resources to keep that team alive if it comes down to that, so the difficulty is mainly just a matter of not killing the thing before you catch it. So ultimately, having the Legendary break out of the ball as often as it does even at minimal HP doesn't make the encounter harder- it just makes it take longer. Just this morning, I had one Legendary that broke out so many times I was legitimately worried the idiot was going to end up struggling to death; looking at its remaining PP, turns out that one battle took 29 TURNS! And like- what did I really gain out of that taking so long? Ultimately, I couldn't even feel tense over the "struggle to death" prospect because I just so annoyed at the game wasting my time. By design, this type of encounter kind of minimizes the role of player skill, since once you have the Legendary low the whole thing just devolves into, "spam resources until the Legendary feels like letting you get on with your life."

Then there's the fact that the low catch rate means you're largely restricted on what types of PokeBalls you can actually use; if you don't use Ultra, Timer or Master, you're probably going to fail that catch (hell, even with Ultra and Timer you probably statistically fail). And that especially sucks if you want to put the Legendary in one of those more unique PokeBalls. Either you waste the one special Ball you have, or you need to be willing to reset potentially hundreds of times until the Pokemon decides to cooperate. Admittedly, this point is also a consequence of them making all these stylish balls and then only giving you 1-2 with no option to ever buy more; at the very least I think there should be a post-game option for acquiring stuff like the Fast Ball, Moon Ball, etc. outside of the Dex reward system. It may be an entirely aesthetic gripe, but it does make the process of acquiring your Legendary collection feel a bit less special since they're largely in the same 2-3 balls.

In contrast, something like the battle to catch Ogerpon focuses on the battle itself as the challenge. It tests your battle prowess, then lets you claim your prize once you've proven yourself without a luck-dependent phase that adds nothing to the encounter. The fact that the catch is guaranteed means you're free to use any type of PokeBall you want, allowing your Legendary collection to feel more dynamic since you essentially customize that bit of aesthetic. Plus, this system means you can't just immediately undercut the encounter with a Master Ball.

Finally, I feel this approach gives the developers more freedom in how these encounters can play out. The "free-catch" battle lets you include phases, such as a mid-battle type change like Ogerpon that prevents you from spamming one move or letting the Legend summon allies ala the Totem Pokemon to make you adapt your strategy to a 2v1 scenario. Structuring future Legendary encounters like these battles could make give GF far more potential for creativity, and I personally feel that this kind of battle just makes the encounters feel more special. The sheer glut of Legendary Pokemon nowadays has gradually led to them feeling less special, and I think the traditional encounter contributes a bit to this since they don't really distinguish these guys from regular Pokemon, especially now that regular Pokemon are open-world spawns, meaning the RBY method of showing X on the overworld is now far from unique. (Hell, there's an argument that the "stand in one place and pose like a statue" thing we still see with many modern legendary encounters now makes these beasts feel less real, less special than normal Pokemon, who walk around the world, fall asleep, sometimes eat a random berry and react to your presence in different ways.) With the right execution, "free-catch" battles could revive some of the awe for these Pokemom that has gradually been lost over the years, give them something that can help them stand out from the crowd again. And also they're just inherently less annoying than the traditional encounter.

Yeah I feel like the method for Eternatus, Dynamax Adventures, Ogerpon, Terapagos, and Bloodmoon and the like, turning the legendary into a formal boss encounter where they have an elevated HP encounter or other things like shields for Terapagos and 4 phase Gauntlet for Ogerpon and whatnot makes the catch feel more satisfying where although the catch is guaranteed, the battle to get them to the point where they let you capture them is so hard and challenging that it feels genuinely satisfying, is what they should do moving forward.

The "low catch rate" worked in older games because the capabilities of the hardware at the time was more limited, so for something like Gen 1, where the birds and Mewtwo were dungeon bosses and the "fail to catch" was straight up the ball missing instead of zero shakes+break, the low catch rate helped them be a challenging boss fight in that manner. But it's very much an archaic way of making the legendaries hard "boss fights", whether they be dungeon bosses or story bosses like mascots in Gens 3-7.

Such a method, while good for its time, has long run its course and isn't as fun anymore and has aged poorly now that they have hardware capable of delivering more fun ways to make RPG boss fights. They should definitely try and move away from that and focus on what they've been doing in recent times with legendaries like the Ogerpon gauntlet or Terapagos, among other special legendaries in the Switch games like LGPE, SwSh, and PLA before it,

 

[WinterArcanine]

(Moving this reply here because while it was in the Little Annoyances thread, the part I responded to both got away from me in length and wasn't really the main point of the response)


The thing that gets me about the level scaling is that it wouldn't really fix what the source of the difficulty is (or is not), which I think even the Teal Mask kind of showcases both intentionally and unintentionally: the actual Pokemon selection.

What good is scaling Katy up to Level 30 if you do Iono first going to matter unless they also evolve her Pokemon past the intentionally-low-power first stage Bugs and Teddiursa? To make the difficulty scaling actually matter you'd have to have checks to update the usable roster by the major opponents (if not at every single milestone, something like every 2-3 out of 18 leaders you fight), which is a massive scope increase for the team design that, let's be frank, NOBODY is going to approach for variance more than 1/20 runs where they specifically want the challenge. How many times do players skip around or take a different order for Erika, Sabrina, and Koga in Kanto, or go to Pryce before Olivine and Cianwood in Johto?

Level Scaling isn't going to get anywhere because outleveling the opponent is always a solution, unless they scale directly with your team by taking an average (as some RPGs do to keep new recruits "on pace" with you). Fighting a Level 50 Grusha with Level 60's isn't that different a challenge from fighting a Level 20 one with Level 25-30's in practice, you're still mostly going to roll over the Ice Weaknesses with maybe a stat check by his Fully Evolved Mons. SV's open nature is down to what order you want to gain certain rewards in: Gym Battles let you catch stronger Pokemon with obedience (opening your roster up for Wild Encounters with a "level floor" by where they spawn), Titans give you more movement options to look for items and special areas more easily if not totally new accessibility, and Starfall Street unlocks TMs so you have more moves available to customize your team or give you objectives to look for and craft them.

Ultimately I fail to see how this is anymore railroaded than previous entries, in that there at least exist side objectives you can make for yourself regardless of if the main progression has an intended order. Compare XY: what is there to do if you're not going through the clear story path? Some stuff like Pokemon performances but no real items to collect or side areas to explore just for their own sake (compare the Safari Zone/Great Marsh in previous games, Fuego Ironworks in Gen 4, the Abyssal Ruins in Unova or B2W2 specifically with the Desert Resort and Relic Castle).

Onto the Teal Mask as my counter example of the Level Scale aspect: Kieran sucks at the start of the DLC, just having a Sentret whether you do it main game or post-game. He's depicted as a meek kid without a lot of prowess for battling or even socializing, but as the plot shows him developing a drive and then obsession with being able to match up to you, his team gets stronger until it ends in what many consider a decently formidable in-game boss. This isn't simply the result of him leveling up his early stage jokers, he adds and replaces members that are more formidable in terms of stats or running strategies (EX: His Poliwrath swaps from using Special moves off its worse stat to stronger Physical attacks and a Belly Drum set up with a Sitrus Berry). If Kieran's battles were simply a team of 4-5 mons like his Paradise Barrens or Loyalty Plaza team jumping 5-10 levels each time, there wouldn't be any increase in difficulty as you do them all.
In turn the reason they can do this feasibly is because Kieran is one recurring opponent to build upon, rather than 8-18 opponents with varying type specialties or outright different strategies necessitated by their Pokemon that you could challenge in any order. Imagine them having to do Kieran's thing for over a dozen different battles, knowing that 75% of those variations are not going to be seen by an appreciable number of players, and is it any wonder that's not where they choose to put their incredibly crunched time and resources?

And this might just be me, but I personally don't get this obsession with Open Exploration games also needing to have non-linear progression. No game is truly non-linear in a meaningful way. Even something like Metroidvanias have gates in the form of movement upgrades or keys that you need to acquire using other abilities that take massive effort to skip over if they even can be. And the other side of the coin is something like the Open Zelda games, where none of the subplots mean jack to each other because they can't know which order players will do them in, and they barely mean anything to resolving the larger conflict because you could potentially go punch Ganon in the face without having done any of them. I remember a TotK compilation that put every Sage next to each other and showed they literally tell you the exact same information multiple times because they can't build off anything established prior in the story without knowing if you've done it already.

tl;dr Level Scaling is a lie, it won't fix any of the complaints people have about the progression in SV on a meaningful level, and the necessary measures are a waste of manpower by Gamefreak.


Honestly it wouldn't surprise me if GF hadn't even thought as far ahead as what Legendaries they were bringing back for the DLC, so they hadn't decided Tapu Koko wasn't coming back by that point (or even if they shifted gears after early VGC while Sun was just already locked in because Torkoal was base game, Groudon was base transfer, and Ninetales had been announced for the DLC ahead of time). The thing is while Flutter Mane is one dumb case, a LOT of the Paradoxes feel like they turn into VGC Ubers with the right support (Bundle outruns Flutter while having Icy Wind for fast Speed Control, Iron Hands goes from a Rocket Launcher to a Rail Gun with Quark Drive, and Iron Crown prefers Psychic Terrain for Expanding Force but they withheld Tapu Lele too so I count this).

Then again they also buffed Incineroar who was already managing top usage in Restricted-allowed Metas so I can only assume the Mon designers are not on the same page as anyone tracking VGC trends. Heck I wonder if those designing new Pokemon are even aware of what Old Pokemon are returning ahead of time.

I'm pretty sure people are referring to changing the pokemon too when they mention level scaling. I know I do.

 

[pika pal]

I'm pretty sure people are referring to changing the pokemon too when they mention level scaling. I know I do.

Which is why I went into significant detail about how much work changing the Mons themselves entails when you balloon it out to the entire collection of story bosses instead of a linear progression for one character.

 

[Sultan]

Which is why I went into significant detail about how much work changing the Mons themselves entails when you balloon it out to the entire collection of story bosses instead of a linear progression for one character.

If they can do it for all the Vs. Seeker trainers, they can do it for the gym leaders.

 

[pika pal]

If they can do it for all the Vs. Seeker trainers, they can do it for the gym leaders.

My counter argument there is that the feature stopped returning after Gen 4 and there's probably a reason or more for that, going back to my "this content will not be seen by an appreciable number of players" statement for one. How many trainers do you think the average player fought using the Vs Seeker?

Anecdotally, no one I knew ever did it save for one handful of trainers in FR/LG that paid out a lot of money using an Amulet Coin and Thief to take Sellable items from the repeat fights, and in that case the trainers were Sevii Island Post game fights that probably didn't get the level of update that a Route 4 Trainer getting Endgame upgrades would.

 

[QuentinQuonce]

(Moving this reply here because while it was in the Little Annoyances thread, the part I responded to both got away from me in length and wasn't really the main point of the response)


The thing that gets me about the level scaling is that it wouldn't really fix what the source of the difficulty is (or is not), which I think even the Teal Mask kind of showcases both intentionally and unintentionally: the actual Pokemon selection.

What good is scaling Katy up to Level 30 if you do Iono first going to matter unless they also evolve her Pokemon past the intentionally-low-power first stage Bugs and Teddiursa? To make the difficulty scaling actually matter you'd have to have checks to update the usable roster by the major opponents (if not at every single milestone, something like every 2-3 out of 18 leaders you fight), which is a massive scope increase for the team design that, let's be frank, NOBODY is going to approach for variance more than 1/20 runs where they specifically want the challenge. How many times do players skip around or take a different order for Erika, Sabrina, and Koga in Kanto, or go to Pryce before Olivine and Cianwood in Johto?

Level Scaling isn't going to get anywhere because outleveling the opponent is always a solution, unless they scale directly with your team by taking an average (as some RPGs do to keep new recruits "on pace" with you). Fighting a Level 50 Grusha with Level 60's isn't that different a challenge from fighting a Level 20 one with Level 25-30's in practice, you're still mostly going to roll over the Ice Weaknesses with maybe a stat check by his Fully Evolved Mons. SV's open nature is down to what order you want to gain certain rewards in: Gym Battles let you catch stronger Pokemon with obedience (opening your roster up for Wild Encounters with a "level floor" by where they spawn), Titans give you more movement options to look for items and special areas more easily if not totally new accessibility, and Starfall Street unlocks TMs so you have more moves available to customize your team or give you objectives to look for and craft them.

Ultimately I fail to see how this is anymore railroaded than previous entries, in that there at least exist side objectives you can make for yourself regardless of if the main progression has an intended order. Compare XY: what is there to do if you're not going through the clear story path? Some stuff like Pokemon performances but no real items to collect or side areas to explore just for their own sake (compare the Safari Zone/Great Marsh in previous games, Fuego Ironworks in Gen 4, the Abyssal Ruins in Unova or B2W2 specifically with the Desert Resort and Relic Castle).

Onto the Teal Mask as my counter example of the Level Scale aspect: Kieran sucks at the start of the DLC, just having a Sentret whether you do it main game or post-game. He's depicted as a meek kid without a lot of prowess for battling or even socializing, but as the plot shows him developing a drive and then obsession with being able to match up to you, his team gets stronger until it ends in what many consider a decently formidable in-game boss. This isn't simply the result of him leveling up his early stage jokers, he adds and replaces members that are more formidable in terms of stats or running strategies (EX: His Poliwrath swaps from using Special moves off its worse stat to stronger Physical attacks and a Belly Drum set up with a Sitrus Berry). If Kieran's battles were simply a team of 4-5 mons like his Paradise Barrens or Loyalty Plaza team jumping 5-10 levels each time, there wouldn't be any increase in difficulty as you do them all.
In turn the reason they can do this feasibly is because Kieran is one recurring opponent to build upon, rather than 8-18 opponents with varying type specialties or outright different strategies necessitated by their Pokemon that you could challenge in any order. Imagine them having to do Kieran's thing for over a dozen different battles, knowing that 75% of those variations are not going to be seen by an appreciable number of players, and is it any wonder that's not where they choose to put their incredibly crunched time and resources?

And this might just be me, but I personally don't get this obsession with Open Exploration games also needing to have non-linear progression. No game is truly non-linear in a meaningful way. Even something like Metroidvanias have gates in the form of movement upgrades or keys that you need to acquire using other abilities that take massive effort to skip over if they even can be. And the other side of the coin is something like the Open Zelda games, where none of the subplots mean jack to each other because they can't know which order players will do them in, and they barely mean anything to resolving the larger conflict because you could potentially go punch Ganon in the face without having done any of them. I remember a TotK compilation that put every Sage next to each other and showed they literally tell you the exact same information multiple times because they can't build off anything established prior in the story without knowing if you've done it already.

tl;dr Level Scaling is a lie, it won't fix any of the complaints people have about the progression in SV on a meaningful level, and the necessary measures are a waste of manpower by Gamefreak.


Honestly it wouldn't surprise me if GF hadn't even thought as far ahead as what Legendaries they were bringing back for the DLC, so they hadn't decided Tapu Koko wasn't coming back by that point (or even if they shifted gears after early VGC while Sun was just already locked in because Torkoal was base game, Groudon was base transfer, and Ninetales had been announced for the DLC ahead of time). The thing is while Flutter Mane is one dumb case, a LOT of the Paradoxes feel like they turn into VGC Ubers with the right support (Bundle outruns Flutter while having Icy Wind for fast Speed Control, Iron Hands goes from a Rocket Launcher to a Rail Gun with Quark Drive, and Iron Crown prefers Psychic Terrain for Expanding Force but they withheld Tapu Lele too so I count this).

Then again they also buffed Incineroar who was already managing top usage in Restricted-allowed Metas so I can only assume the Mon designers are not on the same page as anyone tracking VGC trends. Heck I wonder if those designing new Pokemon are even aware of what Old Pokemon are returning ahead of time.

Okay so I should probably have said in my original post, I assumed team alterations would be inherently implied in level scaling (obviously a gym leader with level 50 basic stage Pokemon would be a complete joke).

There's ways and means to get around a non-linear progression system without having to program in multiple sets of NPC rosters. Perhaps having no badges means that only a handful of NPC opponents are present in the overworld: having one will cause a few more to appear, and so on. That was off the top of my head, but the point I was making was that I don't think Game Freak are innovative enough to make an open-world Pokemon game work as well as it could. Of course you're railroaded to a greater degree in a more linear game, but in a linear game there's an excuse for the gyms being in a set order. In an open world game it makes far less sense for that to be the case.

I myself enjoy doing stuff out of order, or in some extreme cases outright blatant sequence breaking) but that's mostly just for fun. Let's face it, in Kanto you can fight the gym leaders out of order, but for the most part there's not much point because the ones who are too strong... are too strong. As I said, though, I've never been particularly invested in the idea of an open world Pokemon game. But it's an idea I saw mooted for years before the recent set of games, and I presumed the reason people wanted an open world game was for a non-linear experience, and in-game opponents scaling their difficulty to you is surely part of that. If it's going to be as straightforward as a linear game... what does the open-world element add, exactly?

It's not so much that I'm opposed on principle to an open-world setup, though I think there's always a bit of give and take. Very few games are 100% sandbox or 100% linear. I've always loved the Jak and Daxter trilogy, for instance - the first is truly open-world, with only minimal checkpointing and almost every quest being optional, while the second and third have a linear-but-branching progression system where you might have three or four quests at any one time: you have to complete them all eventually, but you're mostly free to choose the order.

Back to Pokemon, it's probably not a coincidence that Black and White - the games criticised for being the most linear of all - are among my favourites in the series. Ironic, really, because Black and White railroad you severely in the early part of the game and it makes replaying them ever so slightly dull. But that's done for mechanical reasons*, not to needlessly constrict you, so I'm generally inclined to forgive it.

That section aside though, I think BW prove that linearity needn't necessarily be a bad thing. Yes, Unova is famously an extremely linear region, but nearly every point of the map has a number of nearby adjoining areas and each route is packed with trainers, buildings, and sidequests. It's not like the glorified corridors of Galar. By contrast the wild area in SwSh is basically just one big empty map. Also, most of its broken bridges are story-related and even then there's still an element of choice: you can clear the gym straight away and remove the next roadblock, or clear out the surrounding areas and then double back.

When I said railroading I was referring to more than just level scaling, such as the shiny locking I initially posted about. My point was about there being an inferred "correct" way to play, which as I said manifests itself in lots of little ways in the more recent games. Like how, for instance, SwSh mandates using the Exp Share. Regardless of how much an open world backdrop seems boundless I feel like there's less choice in the modern games than ever.




_______________________________________________________

*to wit, you're restricted to Fire/Water/Grass, Normal, and Dark pre-badge 1 (unless you grind insanely hard and evolve your Tepig). This is likely because Pidove/Venipede would confer an advantage against Cilan, Blitzle/Sewaddle would confer an advantage against Cress, and Roggenrola/Drilbur would confer an advantage against Chili

 

[CPU]

Bumping this because your wish is granted, along with Mist Ball

The BP buff is definitely nice but I would still say Lumina Crash is the better move for most of the reasons I mentioned initially.

I guess it's nice that they have a slightly stronger Psychic option now (than, well, Psychic).

 

[Hugin]

My counter argument there is that the feature stopped returning after Gen 4 and there's probably a reason or more for that, going back to my "this content will not be seen by an appreciable number of players" statement for one. How many trainers do you think the average player fought using the Vs Seeker?

Anecdotally, no one I knew ever did it save for one handful of trainers in FR/LG that paid out a lot of money using an Amulet Coin and Thief to take Sellable items from the repeat fights, and in that case the trainers were Sevii Island Post game fights that probably didn't get the level of update that a Route 4 Trainer getting Endgame upgrades would.

The difference is that people would absolutely approach the bosses in a different order than intended if they were level scaled. The Vs Seeker was nice, but unnecessary casually. But no one is intentionally following this path:

Hide

And while in a game like Morrowind without level scaling, you can overcome ending up in a bad situation with personal skill and resource use, in Pokemon if you're outleveled by 10+, you're just dead. So either players look up a guide for the "intended boss path", which defeats the purpose of an open-world game, or they go into a bunch of fights and just lose with no warning, then go into other "boss" fights and curbstomp them. Level scaling(with appropriate team design) would fix that.

 

[Castersvarog]

Yeah I feel like the method for Eternatus, Dynamax Adventures, Ogerpon, Terapagos, and Bloodmoon and the like, turning the legendary into a formal boss encounter where they have an elevated HP encounter or other things like shields for Terapagos and 4 phase Gauntlet for Ogerpon and whatnot makes the catch feel more satisfying where although the catch is guaranteed, the battle to get them to the point where they let you capture them is so hard and challenging that it feels genuinely satisfying, is what they should do moving forward.

The "low catch rate" worked in older games because the capabilities of the hardware at the time was more limited, so for something like Gen 1, where the birds and Mewtwo were dungeon bosses and the "fail to catch" was straight up the ball missing instead of zero shakes+break, the low catch rate helped them be a challenging boss fight in that manner. But it's very much an archaic way of making the legendaries hard "boss fights", whether they be dungeon bosses or story bosses like mascots in Gens 3-7.

Such a method, while good for its time, has long run its course and isn't as fun anymore and has aged poorly now that they have hardware capable of delivering more fun ways to make RPG boss fights. They should definitely try and move away from that and focus on what they've been doing in recent times with legendaries like the Ogerpon gauntlet or Terapagos, among other special legendaries in the Switch games like LGPE, SwSh, and PLA before it,

Someone on r/pokemon brought up how they should be doing sidequests related to every legendary Pokémon.
The example they gave was there was an active volcano that was experiencing odd activity which leads to a pair of side quests to find certain items and equipment, once you do those two quest you get a third quest to enter the volcanos depths and eventually encounter Heatran who’s going on a rampage, who after defeating once would lead to a phase 2.

Plus, you wouldn’t even need multiple fire/whatever type dungeons to fulfill this with, just for the volcano alone you could have three legendary quests in the volcano, one going to the peak for Moltres and two using the depths for Heatran/Groudon.

This could even lead to you finding rarer Pokémon you wouldn’t have found otherwise, like Volcarona or Hisuian Growlithe who can now make their homes in the volcano.
Stuff that like would be great for making legendaries feel like a bigger deal

 

[Cobalt Empoleon]

Someone on r/pokemon brought up how they should be doing sidequests related to every legendary Pokémon.
The example they gave was there was a volcano that was experiencing odd activity which leads to a pair of side quests to find certain items and equipment, once you do those two quest you get a third quest to enter the volcano and eventually encounter Heatran who’s going on a rampage, who after defeating once would lead to a phase 2.
Heck this could even lead to you finding rarer Pokémon you wouldn’t have found otherwise, like Volcarona or Hisuian Growlithe who can now make their homes in the volcano.
Stuff that like would be great for making legendaries feel like a bigger deal

There's one particular fangame I've played that had a sidequest for every legendary in its Dex (everything up to Gen 7) and it was really great, although there are a lot of legendaries, so it did become a bit of a slog after a while.

In addition to making the legendaries themselves feel more special, what I particularly liked was how different sidequests were tied to specific human characters according to type/theme/vibe/etc, so they also served as character development and added more opportunities for the player to roleplay through dialogue options.

 

[Castersvarog]

There's one particular fangame I've played that had a sidequest for every legendary in its Dex (everything up to Gen 7) and it was really great, although there are a lot of legendaries, so it did become a bit of a slog after a while.

In addition to making the legendaries themselves feel more special, what I particularly liked was how different sidequests were tied to specific human characters according to type/theme/vibe/etc, so they also served as character development and added more opportunities for the player to roleplay through dialogue options.

That sounds pretty interesting and something the main series could stand for.
Btw what’s the name of the fan game, I’m curious

 

[Cobalt Empoleon]

That sounds pretty interesting and something the main series could stand for.
Btw what’s the name of the fan game, I’m curious

Oh it's Pokemon Reborn! If you're interested in the legendary sidequests specifically they only become available after many many hours of playtime lol, just as a warning (the game is designed to be very challenging, so the legendaries are the last Pokemon that become available for capture).

 

[KalosianPorygon]

My counter argument there is that the feature stopped returning after Gen 4 and there's probably a reason or more for that, going back to my "this content will not be seen by an appreciable number of players" statement for one. How many trainers do you think the average player fought using the Vs Seeker?

Anecdotally, no one I knew ever did it save for one handful of trainers in FR/LG that paid out a lot of money using an Amulet Coin and Thief to take Sellable items from the repeat fights, and in that case the trainers were Sevii Island Post game fights that probably didn't get the level of update that a Route 4 Trainer getting Endgame upgrades would.

As a Vs. Seeker enjoyer, I did not relate to this post at all.
You say everyone uses it to farm money.
I use it on almost every NPC because I feel like beating a variety of teams, plus some of these Trainers gain levels and evolve their Pokémon.

To sum up my feelings in meme form:
You use the Vs. Seeker on the Kanto Route 16 bikers because you want money.
I use the Vs. Seeker on the Kanto Route 16 bikers because I want to beat up bikers.
We are not the same.

 

[AztecCroc]

As a Vs. Seeker enjoyer, I did not relate to this post at all.
You say everyone uses it to farm money.
I use it on almost every NPC because I feel like beating a variety of teams, plus some of these Trainers gain levels and evolve their Pokémon.

To sum up my feelings in meme form:
You use the Vs. Seeker on the Kanto Route 16 bikers because you want money.
I use the Vs. Seeker on the Kanto Route 16 bikers because I want to beat up bikers.
We are not the same.

Also just training in general, in BW literally the only way to train outside of the league and its unskippable 10 minute credits is the once per day fights with Cheren/Bianca and the 3-12 trainers at the Battles Courts in Nimbasa. Also the Royal Unova, but that's time sensitive both in time of day and in time to fight, so not great for training. XY's even worse, literally just the cafés and 1 Rival fight, though at least XY's credits can be skipped.

 

[pika pal]

Also just training in general, in BW literally the only way to train outside of the league and its unskippable 10 minute credits is the once per day fights with Cheren/Bianca and the 3-12 trainers at the Battles Courts in Nimbasa. Also the Royal Unova, but that's time sensitive both in time of day and in time to fight, so not great for training. XY's even worse, literally just the cafés and 1 Rival fight, though at least XY's credits can be skipped.

Do you count the Battle Chateau among the Cafes for XY? I remember doing most of my battling there for post-game stuff.

 

[AztecCroc]

Do you count the Battle Chateau among the Cafes for XY? I remember doing most of my battling there for post-game stuff.

I forgot the Chateau existed, but the periods of waiting for trainers to spawn in there made it not really worth it, even with the writs. It was actually faster to do the league unless you were really lucky, especially since the trainers in there had like 2-3 Pokémon max (aside from Diatha who had 4 when she actually spawned) and it was completely random whether you got one of the actually useful high level trainers with a couple level 45-50 Pokémon or a trainer with a single level 15 Burmy.

 

[Coronis]

I know its far from realistic and goes against the whole catch ‘em all thing, but I like that you can’t trade Shiny mons in the league club trades - and I think it would be kinda cool if you couldn’t trade Shiny mons (or event mons) at all. Would defs make them more special, and the slog to get them more memorable.

Obviously they’d still be available for transfer through dtuff like Home.

 

[Cobalt Empoleon]

As a Vs. Seeker enjoyer, I did not relate to this post at all.
You say everyone uses it to farm money.
I use it on almost every NPC because I feel like beating a variety of teams, plus some of these Trainers gain levels and evolve their Pokémon.

To sum up my feelings in meme form:
You use the Vs. Seeker on the Kanto Route 16 bikers because you want money.
I use the Vs. Seeker on the Kanto Route 16 bikers because I want to beat up bikers.
We are not the same.

Yeah I loved the Vs Seeker and used it a ton, although I understand that we're the minority. Discovering buffed teams and new trainer dialogue was always such a fun surprise for me as a kid and it made the Kanto and Sinnoh regions feel way more alive (although not being able to use it inside was such a letdown).

ORAS was the peak of regular trainer rematches in terms of roster changes, but there's something about the Vs Seeker that I especially enjoyed.

 

[Sonikku A]

I like how most solutions for Legendary capture and finding legendaries boils down to "let's copy Mystery Dungeon"
Fight a boss with significantly higher HP than typical after you get it? Done. Heck, Raid bosses now are edging closer to that
Mini event to explain the boss, instead of them doing nothing in a random cave? Most of Rescue Team's post game is that
Similarly, none mon bosses also were done first in GTI/Super, and both games also had more arena based attacks for bosses not unlike Legend Arceus

 

[KalosianPorygon]

I like how most solutions for Legendary capture and finding legendaries boils down to "let's copy Mystery Dungeon"

Hey, if it's good, it should be okay to copy, right?

 

[LPBvgc]

Also just training in general, in BW literally the only way to train outside of the league and its unskippable 10 minute credits is the once per day fights with Cheren/Bianca and the 3-12 trainers at the Battles Courts in Nimbasa. Also the Royal Unova, but that's time sensitive both in time of day and in time to fight, so not great for training. XY's even worse, literally just the cafés and 1 Rival fight, though at least XY's credits can be skipped.

You know you can just soft reset after the save screen to skip the credits, right?

 

[Bakugames]

I like how most solutions for Legendary capture and finding legendaries boils down to "let's copy Mystery Dungeon"

Mystery dungeon just has very common jrpg boss set ups, so it's less "let's copy mystery dungeon" and more so "make pokemon an actual jrpg"

 

[pokemon4eva]

Ok, 10 days has passed since the ID dlc so SPOILERS AHEAD. Say it with me guys...

Hide

The multiverse

was

a mistake.

I don't dislike the idea of the multiverse, at worst I'm just annoyed lots of franchises are jumping on the bandwagon. But I swear some of Pokemon's shoddiest writing involves the use of the multiverse...

 

[Castersvarog]

Ok, 10 days has passed since the ID dlc so SPOILERS AHEAD. Say it with me guys...

Hide

View attachment 583538
The multiverse
View attachment 583540
was
View attachment 583541
a mistake.

I don't dislike the idea of the multiverse, at worst I'm just annoyed lots of franchises are jumping on the bandwagon. But I swear some of Pokemon's shoddiest writing involves the use of the multiverse...

I’m fine with it for ORAS/USUM, I think it was handled pretty alright there, plus depending on how you look at it every save file and cartridge was a universe in of itself. What happens if one legendary was awoken, what if the other, what if both.

But with SV I find it super freaking boring, it’s another time/space travel plotline for the third, potentially fourth time if you count the Ultra beasts. I’d have vastly preferred if it was imagination/desire made manifest.
It’s a far more unique idea inherently and I feel explains things far better and more interesting than time travel. Why Heath found the paradox Pokémon before the time machines existence, being made manifest from the expeditions teams imagination and carried over to modern day via the scarlet/Violet book, why Koraidon/Miraidon are more important and stronger then the other paradox Mons, being based on his partner, why the Paradox Mons escaping is such a bad idea because it can spiral out of control fast, and explains why the Great Tusk/Iron Treads was able to escape the crater, it didnt escape from the crater it was made outside of the crater.