[Discussion] Managing game difficulty in Essentials

A recurrent question that comes to my mind is, how can I be sure that my game is balanced and challenging enough to be played?

When the first Pokemon games were created a lot of us were still kids, and the battling system was designed accordingly. Fundamentally it did not change a lot through years, yet the player base grew up and might now feel like Pokemon games are too easy and not strategic nor tactical anymore. How do you cope with that "problem" in your own games?

In my opinion a first limitation lies in the complexity of the topic. A first way (maybe the ideal one) to answer the question would be to customize or to improve the game mechanics and/or the AI of Essentials. However that would require a strong coding knowledge - which I have not. When I tried to find information or help about those topics, I found myself thinking, how surprising it is that there is (nearly) no discussion or custom script attempts about AI, while it seems to me that it is a crucial element of every video game. So I guess either people do not care, or found the subject too complex themselves, or found other ways to tackle the problem.

So, when designing the battles which are supposed to be the most challenging in my game (rival, gym leaders...), I tried to do my best to give the player a hard time. Of course you can somewhat manage difficulty by modifying the adverse Pokemon characteristics - level, IV, EV or additionnal elements of the game (money won/lost...) - some custom scripts help you to do that.

However I felt you can not rely entirely on those aspects, since they do not really improve the quality of the battles themselves, and you should also know a lot about Pokemon strategy to be able to design a good game. I learned a lot from watching some competitive PvP Pokemon battles or browsing websites such as Smogon. It helped me to create balanced team compositions and to determine movesets, but the problem is, there is no way to know for sure that the AI will behave as a real player would. In a way, strategic advice you can find on the Internet are all designed for human players: but what are the most effective Pokemon/Movesets/Teams for an AI opponent in Essentials? Did you manage to create tough AI opponents in your game?

Any thought or tip about this topic and about how you deal with those questions in your own game is welcome!

Yes there are many ways to make your boss battles more competitive and challenging but they require proper coding knowledge, there's no shortcut around it.

You could focus on the ability of the Pokémon (eg: if said pokemon has THIS ability and SWITCH X is on DO this), or maybe determine what happens if the pokemon has a certain item or if a particular weather is active.

I personally found it easier to focus on the moveset.
One you have personally chosen an appropriate moveset you can force a strategy and guide the outcome of the battle step by step.

But this becomes increasingly difficult and rather messy if you need to predict beyond 3 turns of the battle and that's the reason why the AI currently works on a score system. It's the only way to keep the single move script section tidy.

Say for example that the gym leader has a Gyarados, a common strategy would be to force substitute fist turn, follow up with dragon dance and then start spamming earthquake.
This, provided that the opposing pokemon won't interfere (predictin that too is another can of worms), needs to be done in the Pokébattle_AI section of the scripts for every single move of said Gyarados. Look at how crazy long this could become:

FIRST TURN:
earthquake if switch XX is on, it's the first turn, your health is >=50% and it's the enemy pokèmon turn use substitute (unless this pokémon is not a gyarados)
substitute ////
dragondance if switch XX is on, it's the first turn, your health is >=50% and it's the enemy pokèmon turn use substitute (unless this pokémon is not a gyarados)
waterfall if switch XX is on, it's the first turn, your health is >=50% and it's the enemy pokèmon turn use substitute (unless this pokémon is not a gyarados)
SECOND TURN:
earthquake if switch XX is on, it's the second turn, your substitute is active and it's the enemy pokèmon turn use dragondance, else use substitute (unless this pokémon is not a gyarados)
substitute if switch XX is on, it's the second turn, your s ubstitute is active and it's the enemy pokèmon turn use dragondance, else use substitute (unless this pokémon is not a gyarados)
dragondance ////
waterfall if switch XX is on, it's the second turn, your substitute is active and it's the enemy pokèmon turn use dragondance, else use substitute (unless this pokémon is not a gyarados)
THIRD TURN:
earthquake ////
substitute if switch XX is on, it's the third turn, your substitute is active (else use substitute) and it's the enemy pokèmon turn use earthquake, (else use dragondance) (unless this pokémon is not a gyarados)
dragondance if switch XX is on, it's the third turn, your substitute is active (else use substitute) and it's the enemy pokèmon turn use earthquake, (else use dragondance) (unless this pokémon is not a gyarados)
waterfall if switch XX is on, it's the third turn, your substitute is active (else use substitute) and it's the enemy pokèmon turn use earthquake, (else use dragondance) (unless this pokémon is not a gyarados)
ETC..