[Discussion] How could the Pokémon battle system be improved?

[MckinkyMcormic]

i agree that there needs to be updated mechanics to the game system, and i think this/the next gen is the best to do it.
i like the idea of the replenishing energy bar thing that has been talked about, and i think it would work great if it was incorporated correctly. for example if the player wanted to attack they would wait for their attack bar to fill up and then would be able to attack. the actual time it takes for the bar to refill would be determined by the speed and the atk/satk, and maybe have individual bars for each one. this way more OP attackers with high attacking stats like mega gardevoir would be tapered by their speed, when in comparison to a poke like greninja who has naturaly lower attacking stats, but higher speed. that could be a deadly combo. in junction with that, the game would feel much more realistic if the actual battles had real pokemon moving, and the player had to dodge the other's moves. a mechanic like this would add tension and skill to the game, making it more immersive and epic. it would be a strain on the hardware, but the gameplay would be amazing.

 

[Megan]

Just give me that speedup button. But in all seriousness, if you want a speedup button, then there's clearly something wrong with the battle system as it's the main reason, why you'd play the games. If the battle system is boring, then even a well written and epic story doesn't help much, because you're constantly thinky "Urgh, another boring battle I have to get through in order to advance the plot.".
A major problem I have when playing fangames especially is the stale and static nature of the battles. I mean, there's a reason why GF introduced permanently animated sprites and camera changes in gen 5 and went one step further in making the Pokemon 3D models. That way the battles feel more dynamic, while the key mechanics stayed the same.

Another thing I wished, people would do, is making the battles more atmosperic. When I walk through the tall grass in an open area and I get a random encounter, I hear the standard battle music and when I walk into a cave and another random encounter happens, the same music starts playing.
Why not create multiple tracks, based on one theme, one sounding more cavish, another one has some waving sound in it and plays while fighting on the ocean? Music plays an important part when trying to build up atmosphere and atmosphere is important when playing a Pokemon game (or any game).

I think a lot of fangame developers believe that the story is more important than the actual gameplay which is why they focus more on plot development and less on making the battles fun and engaging so you _want_ to do some battling in order to progress with the plot.

 

[marinhan]

Put some animations attacks like gameboy's version and it will be no boring :D

 

[Badhaas]

Another interesting question we might ask is; should we simply use the original battle system and original mechanics, or not?

If players want to play with the Pokémon battle system they're better off playing the original games. That level of polish, ease in interaction, engagement through visual representation (animations, camera, etc.) is very hard to achieve in a Pokémon Essentials game, or any engine for that matter. As the ultimate goal of any game is (or should be) to give the player an entertaining experience, might it not be better if we altered the battle system in some way as to make it a different experience from the original games?

 

[Megan]

The original Pokemon Battle system isn't designed for single player games. All balancing that's done in the originals is focused towards multiplayer battles and probably everyone who's played at least one main series game's probably experienced how easy the games become after a certain part in the game (it normally starts after about half of it).

If you're just creating a vanilla Pokemon Fangame it's not as much of an issue, because vanilla Pokemon Fangames are about as hard as the main series, but if you want to make a Pokemon RPG (which is what most fangame creators seem to want), it becomes a hugh problem.

Now, unfortunately I'm not particularly experienced in balancing (in the end I'm just a player who likes to research a little bit about game design) and I also don't know much about Essentials and how it is constructed. What I do know, however: battles (especially Boss battles) have to be challenging. Just setting the level of the opponents on a higher level doesn't really cut it. In a worst case scenario the player gets his Pokemon to Lvl. 100 (if a game creator manages to make his player gind his Pokemon to level 100, that's also bad, but let's ignore that for now) and blasts through the game without problems.

If the battle system had to be changed, it would be in order to fit into the whole Pokemon/-like RPG picture, by making it easier for game creators to balance the game they're creating.
Like, one thing I've been thinking for a while: the EV system is really broken; at least in terms of normal RPGs. Over the couse of the game, the player's Pokemon gain more and more EVs which makes them even stronger than just normal levelups. That results into the game creator having to set the levels of opponents even higher in order to outbalance that issue (and you can only set the levels so high, or else you'd need some strange explanation on why the opposing Pokemon exceed level 100).
If there was an option of, let's say, completely get rid of EV gain (as opposed to having to manually set all EVs to 0), the stats themselves wouldn't differ too much with opponents, so the level differense wouldn't differ so much anymore.

Another issue are boss battles. You can look at it, however you want, in the end even Bosses in Pokemon games are just normal trainers with normal Pokemon that are also bound to their base stats. In RPGs you have your 50 HP weakling random enemy and you have your 5000 HP hard hitting Boss that can only be defeated by using a certain strategy.
Using strategy in Pokemon games is almost never a thing unless you as a player force certain rules onto you (e.g. playing a Nuzlocke). Obviously there's also the issue with which Pokemon the player has available, but that's not important for this topic.

Now unfortunately I don't know what could be done about that.

 

[mej71]

The original Pokemon Battle system isn't designed for single player games. All balancing that's done in the originals is focused towards multiplayer battles and probably everyone who's played at least one main series game's probably experienced how easy the games become after a certain part in the game (it normally starts after about half of it).

If you're just creating a vanilla Pokemon Fangame it's not as much of an issue, because vanilla Pokemon Fangames are about as hard as the main series, but if you want to make a Pokemon RPG (which is what most fangame creators seem to want), it becomes a hugh problem.

Now, unfortunately I'm not particularly experienced in balancing (in the end I'm just a player who likes to research a little bit about game design) and I also don't know much about Essentials and how it is constructed. What I do know, however: battles (especially Boss battles) have to be challenging. Just setting the level of the opponents on a higher level doesn't really cut it. In a worst case scenario the player gets his Pokemon to Lvl. 100 (if a game creator manages to make his player gind his Pokemon to level 100, that's also bad, but let's ignore that for now) and blasts through the game without problems.

If the battle system had to be changed, it would be in order to fit into the whole Pokemon/-like RPG picture, by making it easier for game creators to balance the game they're creating.
Like, one thing I've been thinking for a while: the EV system is really broken; at least in terms of normal RPGs. Over the couse of the game, the player's Pokemon gain more and more EVs which makes them even stronger than just normal levelups. That results into the game creator having to set the levels of opponents even higher in order to outbalance that issue (and you can only set the levels so high, or else you'd need some strange explanation on why the opposing Pokemon exceed level 100).
If there was an option of, let's say, completely get rid of EV gain (as opposed to having to manually set all EVs to 0), the stats themselves wouldn't differ too much with opponents, so the level differense wouldn't differ so much anymore.

Another issue are boss battles. You can look at it, however you want, in the end even Bosses in Pokemon games are just normal trainers with normal Pokemon that are also bound to their base stats. In RPGs you have your 50 HP weakling random enemy and you have your 5000 HP hard hitting Boss that can only be defeated by using a certain strategy.
Using strategy in Pokemon games is almost never a thing unless you as a player force certain rules onto you (e.g. playing a Nuzlocke). Obviously there's also the issue with which Pokemon the player has available, but that's not important for this topic.

Now unfortunately I don't know what could be done about that.

You can simply set level limits for boss battles. A simple NPC that doesn't let you pass if any of your pokemon are over whatever level. Forces the player not to overgrind, and therefore creates a challenge. The problem with bosses in Pokemon is the concept of gym leaders being only a certain type. This is very limiting, especially against a trainer that can have multiple types. Doing away with that would let you give bosses competitive teams, provided you know how to build those. The only hard thing to do is make the AI better. It's not bad as is, but to actually be on a higher skill level would take a lot of rewriting.

I don't really like the concept of RPG bosses too much tbh. It's not difficult, you figure out one or two strategies, and do that repeatedly. Very boring to me. Pokemon could actually be more of a challenge than those, with improved AI obviously, because you and the opponent are on relatively equal footing.

 

[Schrroms]

I'd like to see a system implementing dodging. Dodging has always been a big part of the battles in the anime, but it's more or less absent in the games.

There was some talk on /vp/ a couple days ago about such a system inspired by FF Tactics and how it would add a new layer of stragegy to the games. Peronally, I'd like to see something like that in the official games, but it'd be nice to make something like it in essentials.

Basically, how it would work is each Pokemon would have 3 possible positions on the field: Left, middle and right. Each turn, you'd be able to move to a new position to dodge attacks instead of attacking. Moving would be based on the Pokemon's speed stat, like attack order. You would be able to use weak moves such as ember while moving to a new position to make those moves more useful.

When attacking, the farther you are from the other Pokemon, the weaker your attacks will be. So it could work something like this:

When attacking, you'd be able to "aim" on which tile you want to attack to predict a dodge by the oponnent, similar to how it works in double/triple battles. If there isn't a Pokemon on the tile where you aimed, the attack will miss obviously. Some moves would be able to hit several tiles at once, like in double/triple battles.

I might try to work on a battle system like that for Essentials, once I finish working on the next demo for my main project.