[Discussion] Maximum moves based on level

How many of you have earned a case full of awesome TMs and HMs, but feel terrible about having everyone on your team limited to four moves each? *frustrated sigh* Although I lack the technical skill to hack the game myself, I'd love to see a hack that increases the size of a Pokémon's move-pool based on its relative power. At first, I thought of linking the maximum to evolutionary stages--but not all Pokémon evolve, or have the same number of stages. Don't worry, I'm not asking for 100th-level Pikachu knowing more moves than a version mascot...just a bit more wiggle room in learning. If an increased maximum could be hacked in, what would you consider a reasonable formula for the number of extra moves?

I assume this is referring to Pokemon Hacking, in which case this is the wrong section. The section right above Game Development should be the Emulating Section.

Ooops...I wasn't sure where this hack idea should go, since I'm relatively new to the forums. Could you please move my post if you're an admin, or have one of them move it? Many thanks!

Too bad this question was meant for rom hacking, it's a nice topic to discuss about XD.

Anyway, I think adding additional moveslots would severly overpower some pokes, stallers would be anle to use confuse ray, toxic, protect, double team and substitute. It would be nice to implement, but it would take a lot of work to balance out. Offensive pokemon with a wide movepool would be able to hit pretty much everything for super effective damage.

Maybe you should give every poke an additional moveslot every 20levels, startimg from lvl 30.

I left this thread here because it was an interesting discussion point. Nothing about it is inherently related to ROM hacking, so I saw no reason to move it.

In future, if you see a thread you think is in the wrong place, just report it and don't post about it (BlazingLink). Posting just to tell someone about the rules is called mini-modding, and is considered spam - it is never on-topic.



Do you think any advantage that a Pokémon might gain through knowing 5 or 6 moves at once would/could be cancelled out by the opposing Pokémon being able to know that many moves as well?

Haha, I just made another topic about this in the essentials forum, because I wasn't sure what would happen to this post. It would greatly benefit me in my future project idea, but it also isn't pokemon related, just uses a lot of the same things (capturing monsters, 6v6 style fighting, etc.) It's just a great foundation to make a new and exciting game. I just have absolutely no way on how to about doing it. All I do know it the graphics would definitely have to be changed.

Maruno said:

In future, if you see a thread you think is in the wrong place, just report it and don't post about it (BlazingLink). Posting just to tell someone about the rules is called mini-modding, and is considered spam - it is never on-topic.

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Will do in the future, Maruno.

It is an interesting topic though, too. A level 50 having like 5 moves would be really cool, but it'd be kinda tricky to implement. Pokemon generally seems balanced around 4 moves, but with some twisting, you can make it work I guess.

I've glanced about this thread, and it does look interesting. This is one of those features that people would love to see in a Pokemon game, the inclusion of more than 4 moves.
I personally had my own idea for it - a maximum of 6 moves, but instead of being able to use them all at once, it'd be part of a system where when you deplete the pp of two of your own moves, those two move slots open up for you to use. This could be handy in a battle that's been going on for a while, or a gauntlet of trainers with no healing in between. It could also be used as backup for when your 5 PP moves run out.

Good discussion and good points all round; I personally like the suggestion of adding a Capacity stat that would define the maximum number of learnable moves. A range of 3-6 sounds reasonable, covering everything from Level 1 starters to the Elite Four's teams. Cap Up items should be reserved for mission rewards or hard-to-find hidden objects, perhaps only once or twice per game. If adding this new mechanic is possible, I'd be glad to play-test fan games that used it.

The idea is simple enough, but balancing would be the real issue. You can't simply change the 4 move limit and expect to have the same game "but better".

Perhaps it could be balanced by restricting the available moves (compared to what a Pokémon could currently learn). The simplest option would be reducing the number of compatible TMs, especially for moves apparently against the Pokémon's type/nature (Gyarados learning Flamethrower? Yeah, no). The potential for wider coverage would be countered by less possible coverage.

There are other options too, such as giving each species one or more mana levels which replace PP, or "levelling-up" one move into another (e.g. Bubble into Bubblebeam) tech-tree-style. However, these are all bigger changes to a game than just changing the move number cap, even if you can figure out a way to auto-calculate the masses of new values introduced by one of these schemes. Even this single tweak requires its own set of values (at what levels is the level cap a certain value?) which you'd also need to balance somehow anyway.

In short, I feel that changing the cap on known moves is just one part of a larger change, and probably shouldn't be done by itself unless you really know what you're doing.

A simpler way to achieve this (in terms of balancing that is), is to give the pokemon a Pokemon a higher capacity for moves that can be learned, but allow no more than 4 different moves to be used in a battle. The moves you have selected will reset upon switching out.

Another way is to assign values to moves. These values will represent the "difficulty" of the move to learn. The amount of moves a Pokemon is able to learn is also determined by its capacity. The sum of all values of moves must be smaller than the capacity of the Pokemon. Capacity could increase upon leveling or using items etc.

I've been thinking about a way to put leveling and customizing moves in my game, but I really wouldn't know where to start from when it comes down to programming it... XD

elarmasecreta said:

I've been thinking about a way to put leveling and customizing moves in my game, but I really wouldn't know where to start from when it comes down to programming it... XD

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PP Up "customises" a move by tweaking its total PP. There's a start.

Anything else depends greatly on what exactly you want to do.

One way that could offer some balance would be to initially allow use of any move the Pokemon has learned, but once that move is used, it counts to a limit of 4 selected moves for the rest of the battle, even if switched. (Some edge cases - Choice items could reduce this limit to 1 immediately, and Ditto/Mew could learn any TM, and would copy a pokemon's learnset up to its level plus the TMs, but not anything the opponent had taught the Pokemon artificially)

I love to play a game when the pokémon have 6 moves, these things makes the fangames more unique!

Those are some creative suggestions.[/COLOR][/FONT][/QUOTE]

Maruno said:

The idea is simple enough, but balancing would be the real issue. You can't simply change the 4 move limit and expect to have the same game "but better".

Perhaps it could be balanced by restricting the available moves (compared to what a Pokémon could currently learn). The simplest option would be reducing the number of compatible TMs, especially for moves apparently against the Pokémon's type/nature (Gyarados learning Flamethrower? Yeah, no). The potential for wider coverage would be countered by less possible coverage.

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A good number of TM (to a bigger number of pokémon can fill the 6 move limit) and/or making these TMs very rare are good things to balance the game.

Maruno said:

I left this thread here because it was an interesting discussion point. Nothing about it is inherently related to ROM hacking, so I saw no reason to move it.

In future, if you see a thread you think is in the wrong place, just report it and don't post about it (BlazingLink). Posting just to tell someone about the rules is called mini-modding, and is considered spam - it is never on-topic.



Do you think any advantage that a Pokémon might gain through knowing 5 or 6 moves at once would/could be cancelled out by the opposing Pokémon being able to know that many moves as well?

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^^^^ Your a moderator? When did that happen???? ^^^^^^

Anyways on topic this would be a good idea and I like some of the suggestions that were added here. Here is one of my own, Maybe a condition like the additional moves are special moves and can only be used every 2 turns..

But if all pokemon even the opponents pokemon could have 6 moves, the battles would be alot harder. however the AI would need to be greatly upgraded...