[Release] Pokemon Pink, an RPG

Ezki11 · Jul 19, 2017

Hello there!

Over the past few months, me and a few friends started working on a new Pokemon game on RPG Maker XP using Pokemon essentials. With the current progress going a bit past the first gym, I thought that it was time to put the word out there. So, I formally introduce to you, what we've put hundreds of hours into already, Pokemon Pink.

Download v0.1.1
-Initial Beta Release, up to Marble Cave.
-Fixed a few bugs

Plot

Spoiler:

Features

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The Team

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Screenshots and Gameplay

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Credits

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Nonagon · Jul 21, 2017

Now that right there is an impressive list of features!

I'm excited about this, but also a little concerned. Things like crafting, trainer levels and Pokemon perks would add huge, interesting new dimensions to the Pokemon experience. At the same time, my worry is that stacking all these features runs the risk of turning Pokemon, already a pretty grindy game, into an endless grindfest that completely derails all sense of progression. If everything levels up with me, why wouldn't I just assemble a basic team and grind them up to level 100 in the early areas? If I can't judge the strength of my opponent by their levels, how will I know when I'm strong enough to progress? Maybe level scaling just isn't my flavour, but I feel that a well-balanced game shouldn't need it.

Ezki11 · Jul 21, 2017

Nonagon said:
Now that right there is an impressive list of features!

I'm excited about this, but also a little concerned. Things like crafting, trainer levels and Pokemon perks would add huge, interesting new dimensions to the Pokemon experience. At the same time, my worry is that stacking all these features runs the risk of turning Pokemon, already a pretty grindy game, into an endless grindfest that completely derails all sense of progression. If everything levels up with me, why wouldn't I just assemble a basic team and grind them up to level 100 in the early areas? If I can't judge the strength of my opponent by their levels, how will I know when I'm strong enough to progress? Maybe level scaling just isn't my flavour, but I feel that a well-balanced game shouldn't need it.

Great concerns, which is also one of my biggest. I've thought about it, and right now, I'm trying something new with the stat points. So what's going to happen is that the first Pokemon you catch would be pretty normal, and they will max out with levels, skills, and stat points. However, trainer Pokemon will continuously get stronger with their own perks, increased stats, and possibly levels. So what I'm trying to balance that with is the concept of breeding.

I aim to make breeding more specialized. Yes, people already breed for IVs, but now, I'm experimenting with the amount of stat points that the parent Pokemon would be able to pass on to their offspring. What does this mean? So take for example, you have a level 100 Charizard that you allocated all the stat points into Special Attack. When you breed that Charizard with another Pokemon that would have 0 stat points, a certain percent of points would be inherited by the level 1 Charmander. If I set it at 25%, then the Charmander would start with 25 stat points, meaning that at level 100, it would have a total of 125 extra stats. This could be passed on and on.

This is still in the works, and I'm still testing the balance, but that's the plan. As for the grindfest, that is another thing that I am still trying to remedy, but keep in touch for updates and solutions that I find.

Thanks for checking this game out!

Nonagon · Jul 21, 2017

Ezki11 said:
I aim to make breeding more specialized. Yes, people already breed for IVs, but now, I'm experimenting with the amount of stat points that the parent Pokemon would be able to pass on to their offspring. What does this mean? So take for example, you have a level 100 Charizard that you allocated all the stat points into Special Attack. When you breed that Charizard with another Pokemon that would have 0 stat points, a certain percent of points would be inherited by the level 1 Charmander. If I set it at 25%, then the Charmander would start with 25 stat points, meaning that at level 100, it would have a total of 125 extra stats. This could be passed on and on.

So not only would I have to raise my Pokemon to level 100, I would then have to start again from scratch, over and over, as well as dealing with the RNG of breeding, to get a slightly better result each time? For every Pokemon that I want on my team? That's the single grindiest concept I've ever heard. How much breeding and party micromanagement do you estimate would be necessary to complete the game? How many hours of gameplay would that take? As a casual player who likes to just level up as I go, this all looks incredibly daunting. And the end result is the same as the problem you're trying to avoid; instead of the player over-leveling their team to make the game easier, they can take a hundred times longer to over-stat them instead.

Ezki11 · Jul 21, 2017

Nonagon said:
So not only would I have to raise my Pokemon to level 100, I would then have to start again from scratch, over and over, as well as dealing with the RNG of breeding, to get a slightly better result each time? For every Pokemon that I want on my team? That's the single grindiest concept I've ever heard. How much breeding and party micromanagement do you estimate would be necessary to complete the game? How many hours of gameplay would that take? As a casual player who likes to just level up as I go, this all looks incredibly daunting. And the end result is the same as the problem you're trying to avoid; instead of the player over-leveling their team to make the game easier, they can take a hundred times longer to over-stat them instead.

The first thing is that there is no RNG involved in breeding with stat points; it would be a set percentage. And the amount of micromanagement would depend on the difficulty you're playing on. On normal, you wouldn't even need it at all. On hard, it is just a boosted normal. On nightmare, think dark rising difficult but balanced, and breeding is highly suggested. On the most difficult, it would take two to three generations of Pokemon to "overpower" the opponent. The reason I made breeding so important will be revealed later.

The problem with normal Pokemon games is how easy it is and how some Pokemon are inherently better than others. I'm trying to fix both at once with this system. Another part of the game is that the level cap isn't really a cap. There is no limit to how strong your Pokemon could be in this game, and this plays a HUGE role in the story.

I should also mention that wild Pokemon scale to the lowest level in your team while trainers scale to the highest. This allows players to be able to train their weaker Pokemon in the wild while still providing a challenge in the story.

I see that grinding is a huge problem, but that really depends on how you play. In a regular Pokemon game, what's stopping the player from grinding in the first route to level 100? Sure the weaker levels deter the player, but nothing' stopping them. The same could be said here. Yes they have the option to, but the fact that they are just the game more difficult from themselves would deter them from doing so. I didn't want to completely fix the grinding problem, and there is a reason why I would want them to do a bunch of wild battles that I just haven't released yet. Also, there is nothing stopping you from leveling as you go.

Technically speaking, I could just remove stat points, perks, and the grinding systems, but that would just make it another Pokemon game when I'm trying to add more RPG elements.

However, if you have a remedy that would fix all these problems, feel free to make a suggestion and I'll check it out. Once again, thanks for the feedback and concern! :)

Nonagon · Jul 21, 2017

As long as there's a way to do one or both of the following:

A) Know how powerful the game expects me to be. If I can't look at an enemy's levels and estimate how long I'll have to train before I can beat them, then battles become a frustrating game of trial and error as I over- and under-train for them.

B) Speed up the leveling process. Fully leveling and EV training a Pokemon takes a long time, and I would be hesitant to play a game that demands this as part of regular gameplay instead of as an optional exercise.

Don't take this the wrong way; I love where you're going with this, and I'm excited to see these ideas put into practice. But I also have very strong opinions about game pacing, and I've never found level scaling to be a good solution for it. For now, it looks like I'll be playing on Hard at most.

Randomnessly · Jul 21, 2017

Now this, this is the RPG feel that I want in a Pokemon game.

There's the new stat system, the crafting system, the planned leveling up moves, and then there are the item drops from defeating Pokemon.

This makes it feel more of a traditional RPG rather than what the normal Pokemon games have.

Ezki11 · Jul 21, 2017

Nonagon said:
As long as there's a way to do one or both of the following:

A) Know how powerful the game expects me to be. If I can't look at an enemy's levels and estimate how long I'll have to train before I can beat them, then battles become a frustrating game of trial and error as I over- and under-train for them.

B) Speed up the leveling process. Fully leveling and EV training a Pokemon takes a long time, and I would be hesitant to play a game that demands this as part of regular gameplay instead of as an optional exercise.

Don't take this the wrong way; I love where you're going with this, and I'm excited to see these ideas put into practice. But I also have very strong opinions about game pacing, and I've never found level scaling to be a good solution for it. For now, it looks like I'll be playing on Hard at most.

Those are some great ideas. I agree with you that games with terrible pacing are usually unplayable for me. I will take the utmost precaution of pacing. A) This is a little trickier to do, but I will think of a way to do it. B) How about, based on the difficulty you play on, the amount of exp and EVs you earn is multiplied, ie. x4 on Normal, x2 on Hard, etc. These are not final numbers, but something like that. I will be testing this game for balance over and over, so I hope that this eases your concern a bit. Thanks for sharing your thoughts; it definitely will help this game become a lot better! :)

Now this, this is the RPG feel that I want in a Pokemon game.

There's the new stat system, the crafting system, the planned leveling up moves, and then there are the item drops from defeating Pokemon.

This makes it feel more of a traditional RPG rather than what the normal Pokemon games have.

Thanks! That's what we're going for!

darkprince0521 · Jul 22, 2017

Wow, simply reading the features makes me excited. When completed, it's gonna be one of the best fan game ever.

Stoffles67 · Jul 22, 2017

Ezki11 said:
Those are some great ideas. I agree with you that games with terrible pacing are usually unplayable for me. I will take the utmost precaution of pacing. A) This is a little trickier to do, but I will think of a way to do it. B) How about, based on the difficulty you play on, the amount of exp and EVs you earn is multiplied, ie. x4 on Normal, x2 on Hard, etc. These are not final numbers, but something like that. I will be testing this game for balance over and over, so I hope that this eases your concern a bit. Thanks for sharing your thoughts; it definitely will help this game become a lot better! :)

For A) maybe you can implement a similar system to Borderlands, where they rank the difficulty of missions based on your current level? So you would effectively set a difficuty based on the trainer's level. Althernatively, you could potentially set a maximum level for the gym leader's pokemon. Then you would set the perceived difficutly based on the relative distance your highest level pokemon is from this maximum level. This level could be set such that only people who spend massive amounts of time grinding would be able to be over leveled, in which case, why not reward their effort? Besides, as you get to the last gym leader or elite 4 member, the maximum level would likely be set high enough that the over levellers would't actually be able to progress.

Anyway, these are obviously just some suggestions. Good luck otherwise!

Ezki11 · Jul 22, 2017

Stoffles67 said:
For A) maybe you can implement a similar system to Borderlands, where they rank the difficulty of missions based on your current level? So you would effectively set a difficuty based on the trainer's level. Althernatively, you could potentially set a maximum level for the gym leader's pokemon. Then you would set the perceived difficutly based on the relative distance your highest level pokemon is from this maximum level. This level could be set such that only people who spend massive amounts of time grinding would be able to be over leveled, in which case, why not reward their effort? Besides, as you get to the last gym leader or elite 4 member, the maximum level would likely be set high enough that the over levellers would't actually be able to progress.

Anyway, these are obviously just some suggestions. Good luck otherwise!

Those are some great ideas! I especially like the second idea. I'll see how the pacing and balance works with that system.

Stoffles67 · Jul 23, 2017

I really love the RPG idea. Would you consider implenting a system where you can run your own gym? Then you could recruite trainers that you beat throughout the story.

Also, for extra RPG elements, would it be possible for the player to gain proficiencies in specific pokemon types, like gym leaders? For example, if you train dark pokemon, then all your dark pokemon gain some bonus like higher attack etc. This would force players to train different pokemon as they go along in order to gain the full benefits from each pokemon type.

Ezki11 · Jul 23, 2017

Stoffles67 said:
I really love the RPG idea. Would you consider implenting a system where you can run your own gym? Then you could recruite trainers that you beat throughout the story.

Also, for extra RPG elements, would it be possible for the player to gain proficiencies in specific pokemon types, like gym leaders? For example, if you train dark pokemon, then all your dark pokemon gain some bonus like higher attack etc. This would force players to train different pokemon as they go along in order to gain the full benefits from each pokemon type.

The gym was something I was thinking about actually. I just needed to find a way to integrate it into the story. As for the specific types, I think that its a great idea! I will definitely integrate it into the game, maybe try to integrate it into trainer levels and perks somehow.

Ezki11 · Sep 8, 2017

First Beta is up for download. Please report any bugs you find, it will be a great help! Not all features are implemented/working yet.

Ezki11 · Sep 10, 2017

Uploaded a new file. Should not crash on hard and nightmare now.

looneyman1 · Sep 11, 2017

I can see a revolution taking place here, I hope other fangame makers follow this concept. The stat changes alone offers so much potential.

[Release] Pokemon Pink, an RPG

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