Competitive Play and Friendship

Some time ago, there was a thread in these forums questioning if GameFreak should cater to competitive players. One of the points made on that thread was how the competitive aspect of the Pokémon games seems to conflict with the series' concept of befriending Pokémon and having them achieve their best in battle through that friendship.

The problem is that friendship has very little effect on competitive battles. Most of the time, preparing for competitive play implies replacing the Pokémon used during the main adventure (or any other Pokémon the player may actually be fond of), either with ones bred specifically for a team role or with ones of a different species altogether. Sometimes, even Pokémon that were bred and trained with competitive play in mind are replaced by others later on.

There were other discussions on that thread, but I only made a brief post addressing this conflict there. My stance was that the mechanics relevant to competitive play (IVs, EVs, Natures, etc.) should coexist with the concept of having our Pokémon grow strong though friendship, and be more connected than they currently are.

I'm making this thread to focus on that point. What do you think about the nature of competitive play and the series' friendship concept? Should they remain as they are or be unified in some way? Share and discuss any ideas for changes you would make to the games' mechanics based on this subject.

I don't mind them catering to the competitive scene, I just want them to cater to those of us who don't play competitively and make games with cool features and a good story.

Quajutsu said:

I don't mind them catering to the competitive scene, I just want them to cater to those of us who don't play competitively and make games with cool features and a good story.

Click to expand...

What he said.

While it's nice to see features catering towards competitive players, I feel like the postgame has been shallow lately because there is literally nothing to do aside from competitive stuff. Game Freak needs to perfectly balance a postgame full of features catering to both casual and competitive players. That was something that both HG/SS and B2/W2 got right.

I thought this for the longest time, too. Once they introduced the friendship or happiness mechanic with Poke-Aime, I loved it. I was super excited when they brought it back in ORAS (every tme a new Pokemon game comes out I'm terrified to find out which features they took out or replaced, wondering if it was my favorite feature of the previous games). However, I was watching the first season when I came across an episode where Ash is taking a test to go to Pokemon school, for whatever reason. He was there with Jesse and James. I forget the details, but Ash isn't allowed to battle, when it's time for the hand's-on part of the test, with his own Pokemon - instead, he has to use the "competitive" Pokemon from the institution, which were specifically raised to do battling/battle simulations. At least, I think that's how it went.

So this:

flight said:

I kinda think GF should more or less leave things be. The competitive features should remain to make the more competitively-minded players happy, and then the non-competitive focused things (like Pokemon-Aime) should co-exist to make those who aren't so concerned with the competitive side of things happy..

Click to expand...

is the opinion I have nowdays. Well, I'd like more features like Aime, or at least more games and ways to interact with your Pokemon. Let me feed them something other than Poffins, please.

flight said:

I honestly think the post-game for recent Pokemon games i.e X/Y and ORAS is rather shallow, even from a competitive standpoint. GF would just have a lot more success in just bringing back the Battle Frontier in some shape or form if they wanted to truly go above and beyond for the competitive players, but lately it seems the post-games have been rather disappointing in both casual and competitive fronts.

Click to expand...

The post-game has been abysmal. Compared to the post-game of the GBA games, which took multiple hours and had an interesting story, the post-games in gen VI, at the very least, have been lackluster. The Delta Episode of ORAS was a step in the right direction, but it still only took about an hour and that could have been fleshed out a bit more.

flight said:

I stated it a few times, but I'm going to shorten my response here:

I kinda think GF should more or less leave things be. The competitive features should remain to make the more competitively-minded players happy, and then the non-competitive focused things (like Pokemon-Aime) should co-exist to make those who aren't so concerned with the competitive side of things happy. I honestly see nothing wrong with GF focusing on making the games more competitive as long as they arent pushing it too much, because it helps those who aren't familiar with the concept of competitive battling learn it much easier, in a way.

Click to expand...

It seems most people think like that. When I said that I would like both aspects of the game to coexist and be more connected, what I had in mind was a system that allowed players to prepare for competitive play just by playing regularly though the games (for example, the ability to raise a Pokémon's IVs by doing side activities like Pokémon-Amie or the Pokéathlon).

In the same way, taking part in player-versus-player battles would also give something to non-competitive players. For example, by raising a Pokémon's friendship or awarding small amounts of Pokéblocks or other items with non-combat uses after each battle.

Competitive play would probably be more noticeably benefited from a system like this, since regular play in general doesn't require the amount of preparation that competitive does.

The ones who aren't catered enough are obviously the non-competitive players. {XD} Just look how boring the whole Gen VI post-game is, I'm not even talking about the lack of Battle Frontier issue! Are they really expecting us to play PokéAmie and participate the Contest Spectacular all day long? {XD}

On the other hand, the competitive players are already catered enough in my not so humble opinion. {XD} Super Training, Horde Battle and other mechanic introductions throughout the 6 generations, as well as real life events like monthly online competitions by Global Link and the annual video game World Championship since year 2009. If those aren't enough, then what should Game Freak and The Pokémon Company do to satisfy people? {XD}

i like Pikachu