6th Gen Horde Encounters!

Ardos said:

Bleh. Not too fond of the idea of trainer hordes. I don't even like regular wild hordes. It could just get soooo annoying and tedious. We'll have to see how it goes. I hope its only with Team Aqua and Magma and not with regular trainers too...

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Well, if it is only with Team Aqua and Magma, you may not need to worry. The ones in the screenshot seem to be in the Lilycove hideout, and they say "the power of quintuplets" like we haven't seen it before, so that may be the first Horde Trainer in the main story. By then we are required to have Surf, so I can't imagine them being too time-consuming.

Something I didn't mention earlier is, if that Horde Trainer battle is indeed in the Lilycove hideout, it may replace the Admin battle that happens just before the submarine leaves for Seafloor Cavern, and if so, we may get to battle the Boss and both Admins of our version's team there.

Remember that at that point in the story, every grunt in the hideout was ordered to simply keep watch or try to hold us up. None of them really expected to personally beat us, as they would leave that to the Admin at the end; they expected us to be tired out by then. It could be that this time they plan to leave that to the Team Magma Horde in the screenshots.

The whole Evil Trainer Horde battles reminds me of the Hexagon brothers form Pokemon XD:



It'd be awesome if the Evil Horde trainers are like them, but, I think it's.. not very likely, haha. Still though, this is an interesting mechanic; if it plays like the horde wild battles, but, harder, I think we'll be in for some difficult, yet satisfying battles against those evil teams. C:

The only thing I'd be concerned about is the lag. Like, I hope the lag will be better for this sort of thing this time around, but, idk, judging from the trainer, I'm not sure if that's only but a pipe dream. 8(

I don't know how I feel about trainer hordes, to be honest. I love hordes and it makes EV training and shiny hunting ridiculously easy, but I have my own horde Pokémon that knows Sweet Scent and multi-hit moves that I take with me when I do go horde hunting. It's a pain to encounter in the story mode if you don't have multi-hit moves though.

Horde battles are cool, glad its coming back. It's gonna be cool going against 5 different Team Magma/Aqua Grunts!

Nice to see horde battles are back, but they made it 10x more threatening thanks to those Horde Trainer battles with Team Magma and Team Aqua grunts. It makes me all the more looking forward to carrying spread moves on my team so I can massacre them in great numbers!

(yeah I punned the "great numbers" reference from the Marriland's Pokemon Diamond Adventure video series lol)

Horde Trainer Battles will be fun I think, and an easy way to get a bulk of experience. Interesting, definitely, that they decided to implement it, and I wonder in what capacity will it be included in the remakes.

Looking at how much they have included different battle types in the past, we unfortunately probably won't get that many horde battles. BW introduced Rotation/Triple battles but there were only a few places to actually battle them. We'll probably get to battle a few during the storyline and maybe once when we're done. They might just be testing the waters.

OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire said:

I can see Minun and Plusle being together in hordes. It'll actually allow them to use their ability in battle against us.

I can see Seviper hordes, with maybe a Zangoose (should be a very low chance) popping up in AS, and the opposite for OR.

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You're right, now that I remember they were in mixed hordes in X and Y I see no reason why they'd change that haha :)


With Seviper and Zangoose though, even though they were in mixed hordes as well in X/Y I'm kinda worried that they won't be this time around given that they were exclusives in the originals. I really hope you're right though and this is maybe the only way to get them in each game cause I'm getting OR and really want a Seviper haha, so fingers crossed :)

XtinaIsMeLuvinWWE said:

You're right, now that I remember they were in mixed hordes in X and Y I see no reason why they'd change that haha :)


With Seviper and Zangoose though, even though they were in mixed hordes as well in X/Y I'm kinda worried that they won't be this time around given that they were exclusives in the originals. I really hope you're right though and this is maybe the only way to get them in each game cause I'm getting OR and really want a Seviper haha, so fingers crossed :)

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In the original Ruby Seedot is exclusive, and in Sapphire and Emerald Lotad was exclusive to those two. Yet there was a small chance of a swarm with the opposite exclusive. So it could be that way, but with a small chance of them appearing in hordes :)

XtinaIsMeLuvinWWE said:

You're right, now that I remember they were in mixed hordes in X and Y I see no reason why they'd change that haha :)


With Seviper and Zangoose though, even though they were in mixed hordes as well in X/Y I'm kinda worried that they won't be this time around given that they were exclusives in the originals. I really hope you're right though and this is maybe the only way to get them in each game cause I'm getting OR and really want a Seviper haha, so fingers crossed :)

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In X & Y's case, Zangoose and Seviper were sort-of version exclusives given only one was found through normal encounters while the other was only found in hordes (Seviper was Y exclusive, Zangoose in X but the other one could be obtained in a horde, if you knew how to defeat the other Zangoose/Seviper first before it gets slaughtered). A similar thing also happened with Minun and Plusle, the former was only in Y and the latter in X, but you could get the other electric rodent of the duo in hordes.

I also recall in the original Ruby & Sapphire that one of the electric rodents was more common in one version than the other. Minun was found more often in Ruby and Plusle in Sapphire, yet both could be obtained in the same version. It's just that one is rarer than the other.

I'm actually rather disappointed with this. Why can't we just have traditional single battles like in older games? D: I have a hard enough time with triple and rotation battles as it is, and now we are going to have THIS? ;o;

OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire said:

In the original Ruby Seedot is exclusive, and in Sapphire and Emerald Lotad was exclusive to those two. Yet there was a small chance of a swarm with the opposite exclusive. So it could be that way, but with a small chance of them appearing in hordes :)

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Ah that makes sense, I always wondered why I couldn't find a Seedot in Emerald haha :) Looks like I'll be getting a Seedot this time around if they keep the same exclusives! :) I never really paid attention to swarms; much prefer hordes so I'm hoping you're right and that they'll do something similar with the Seviper situation :)

Hikamaru said:

In X & Y's case, Zangoose and Seviper were sort-of version exclusives given only one was found through normal encounters while the other was only found in hordes (Seviper was Y exclusive, Zangoose in X but the other one could be obtained in a horde, if you knew how to defeat the other Zangoose/Seviper first before it gets slaughtered). A similar thing also happened with Minun and Plusle, the former was only in Y and the latter in X, but you could get the other electric rodent of the duo in hordes.

I also recall in the original Ruby & Sapphire that one of the electric rodents was more common in one version than the other. Minun was found more often in Ruby and Plusle in Sapphire, yet both could be obtained in the same version. It's just that one is rarer than the other.

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Ah thank you, one of the main reasons I knew about hordes actually was cause I had X and wanted Seviper (the Zangoose killing it all the time was soo frustrating though, was so happy when I finally figured out that Chatot using Synchronoise did the trick!) :) and Minun and wanted to know if there was a legitimate way to get them in the games :) What I didn't know though was the ratios and rarity of finding all of them so thank you that's really good to know, should hopefully make finding Minun in OR a lot easier for me! :)

Hikamaru said:

In X & Y's case, Zangoose and Seviper were sort-of version exclusives given only one was found through normal encounters while the other was only found in hordes (Seviper was Y exclusive, Zangoose in X but the other one could be obtained in a horde, if you knew how to defeat the other Zangoose/Seviper first before it gets slaughtered). A similar thing also happened with Minun and Plusle, the former was only in Y and the latter in X, but you could get the other electric rodent of the duo in hordes.

I also recall in the original Ruby & Sapphire that one of the electric rodents was more common in one version than the other. Minun was found more often in Ruby and Plusle in Sapphire, yet both could be obtained in the same version. It's just that one is rarer than the other.

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I think that Minun and Plusle were the same way in XY too. Somehow I only ran into Minuns in Y instead of Plusles which were rare to come across (well in my experience).

OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire said:

I think that Minun and Plusle were the same way in XY too. Somehow I only ran into Minuns in Y instead of Plusles which were rare to come across (well in my experience).

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Yeah, they made them pseudo-exclusives in that matter. It's when they have a duo of similar Pokemon that is more common in one version than the other. An unusual case is the Cottonee and Petilil lines in 5th Gen, where you could do an in-game trade to get the other Grass-type (trade Cottonee in Black/B2 to get Petilil or trade Petilil in White/W2 to get Cottonee) so that essentially meant you could obtain both in the same game.

I think I could likely see OR/AS have the same Plusle/Minun horde mechanic that X/Y had.

I think it's a good addition to the game. It really adds to the struggle of taking on a criminal organisation if instead of playing by the rules so to speak, that they instead just mob you. We all know anyway they they'll throw us some TMs for spread moves before such encounters happen anyway, so it's not really going to be that hard, it will still be a cool change of pace from battling masses of gang members one on one.

Answering to the main topic. That makes it even more awesome than it was before, because you can get lots of more experience. It's a cool addition that will make the game and plot even more pleasureable :)

Tenth Doctor said:

I'm actually rather disappointed with this. Why can't we just have traditional single battles like in older games? D: I have a hard enough time with triple and rotation battles as it is, and now we are going to have THIS? ;o;

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I'm guessing you never EV trained in X&Y... if you did you would be GLAD to have it back... plus it is not a bad way to have a HA Pokemon. ( harder than Friend Safari granted but still way easier than what we used to have in Gen 5)

The horde trainer encounter thing really looks awesome, it should definitely make the villainous teams seem more threatening with more Pokemon & more trainers.

OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire said:

So long as their levels are lower than our Pokémon's I won't mind horde battles at a Battle Frontier facility.

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Good point. And I hope at the Battle Frontier in ORAS is more like to it's Emerald version, rather than it's Platinum version. Reason I say so, is because I never got to play the Pokemon Emerald Battle Frontier...

zigazav said:

Good point. And I hope at the Battle Frontier in ORAS is more like to it's Emerald version, rather than it's Platinum version. Reason I say so, is because I never got to play the Pokemon Emerald Battle Frontier...

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I really don't see Horde Battles occurring at the Battle Frontier... what reason could they put in place that would make sense for them to happen there? The reason that we have horde battles with grunts from the evil teams is because they are trying to use their numbers to take us out, they're trying to play unfairly and I just can't really see this in a Battle Frontier unless it was its own facility in a future game.