All about Happiness

Zeostar

Zeostar

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    Here's a couple related to happiness

    What do you think of happiness evolutions?

    Do you care about happiness in general? Like, do you avoid giving pokemon energy herbs and bitter items?

    I'm always worried that I won't get the happiness evolution in time, and that I might miss out on an important move as a result. For example in gen 4, Espeon learns confusion at level 15 and doesn't receive another psychic move until around 33. But it's so hard to get it to evolve before level 15, even with a soothe bell.
     
    I really like the happiness aspect of the game. Even though it is a game, I enjoy having my Pokemon like me to the extent that I won't give them energy herbs or bitter items just because of the reduction in happiness. The happiness evolution is always such a nice surprise when it happens because it's like aww they love me enough to evolve now <3 I really liked the addition of Pokemon-Amie and how Pokemon could avoid hits and land crits more often based on their affection towards you. I'm not the kind of player who really watches for when a Pokemon learns x move at y level so when they evolve from happiness never bothered me.
     
    Happiness is a nice concept and fits well with training cute little critters. It practice it's kinda awful. You get a Pokemon that evolves by friendship and the next half an hour you spend your time doing nothing but running in circles. If you don't then who knows how long it will take.

    The worst memory I still have is getting Eevee in Gold and wanting to evolve it into Espeon: I took it with me, played the game normally and it took until beating Lance for it to finally evolve. by the time it had already reached level 50!

    I appreciate that they gave us more options to raise friendship, like the Soothe Bell. But if I want something to evolve by friendship I'll probably just keep running around in circles for a while. Just so I can get the most out of the evolution.

    I do admit, however, that it really is a difficult mechanic to balance. Especially if you want a little bit of realism to go with it.
     
    I liked how in gen 3 games the happier a Pokemon was, the more its sprite jumped in the status menu.
     
    suddenly i like walking more when i have a Golbat in the team lmao. i'm also super careful not to KO it, & feed it as much vitamins as i can. happiness evos also build some sort of thrill and tension with every level up. i'm always thinking like "omg is this the one", and it's almost always a nice surprise/sense of relief when it finally happens!

    to put it bluntly, yes i like the mechanic heh.
     
    [PokeCommunity.com] All about Happiness

    Sylveon loves happiness!
     
    Agrees with Seliph. Likes the idea of happiness. Centers around catching, raising, and battling Pokemon. Ought to be a major game mechanic. Becomes thornier in practice.

    Example: Introduces penalties for unhappy Pokemon. Refuses to listen to you. Hits a little weaker. Sounds interesting, particularly for a challenge run. Asks why they became unhappy originally, though. Presumably occurred due to fainting more than bitter items. Causes a Pokemon possibly underperforming to fare even worse. Amounts to a death spiral.

    Wishes for smaller (battle) benefits from happiness. Wants to keep a steady team of happy Pokemon, purely as personal preference. Juices up Pokemon too much. Handled it okay in Sword/Shield, however. (Lowered happiness evolutions to 160. Capped happiness at 160 without using Pokemon Camp. Gated in-battle effects behind that.)
     
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    i like happiness bc i'm a huge sap LOL but it can be an annoying mechanic esp in older games where there are less ways to increase it. i'm looking at you, gen 2.
     
    This was a huge issue for me as a kid, since it was so slow and expensive. Nowadays getting your Pokemon to max happiness is a lot easier since money is quicker to make (among other things), but still a little bit tedious for some people. Gen II was especially tough for me since those vitamins were so costly and grinding the E4 for money was so slow. :(
     
    Roni said:
    interesting. did Gen 2 not have that "+1 happiness to your party with every step you took" mechanic?
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    it does, but slightly different in gen 2. there's a CHANCE you'll get +1 happiness after 256 steps. i think from gen 3 onward though, it's a given that you'll get that. but gen 2 it's just a chance of that, and you get friendship from leveling up and hair cuts, but that's pretty much it. and it still didn't give as much as it does in later titles.
     
    I love the happiness mechanic!! I'm really glad they combined affection and happiness into one thing in SWSH though, since it was a bit of a pain figuring out slowly that they were different things in SUMO.. Also since the only pokemon that evolves based on affection is Sylveon, iirc? I'm not saying it's a waste of a mechanic but why couldn't there be other affection based evolutions?
     
    colours said:
    i like how you can cheese the happiness mechanic by just feeding pokemon EV-reducing berries lmao
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    It reminds of the trick to get bulbasaur in Pokemon Yellow. You had to have a happy pikachu, so you could just spam potions on it at full health.
     
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