How can leveling Pokemon be made less boring?

[Lady Berlitz]

Taking an idea from an MMORPG I play constantly, you could do quests/tasks which give Pokémon experience. It wouldn't be as boring, because even if the quest/task is tiresome, the reward is a large amount of experience at one time. If that's not possible, there could be quests/tasks that give out Rare Candies? Just a thought.

 

[brandon1971]

I am working on a hack called Pokemon Emerald advanced. In my hack, you tend to have at least 3 level 60's with you, and there is very little grinding. What I did is, raised the levels of all the trainers and raised levels of wild pokemon, it does not seem like it works, but After playing my hack all the way through, 3 of 4 players were able to defeat the elite four on their first try. I also have a real estate system, and a girl named neko girl yui that you can have live at your house. she has three lv 60 dragons with her. You can battle her at any time when you get her to go to your house. IOf you ever need to get your pokemon levelled talk to her and there you go, easy training.

 

[Alignment]

Taking an idea from an MMORPG I play constantly, you could do quests/tasks which give Pokémon experience. It wouldn't be as boring, because even if the quest/task is tiresome, the reward is a large amount of experience at one time. If that's not possible, there could be quests/tasks that give out Rare Candies? Just a thought.

I heard that if you use rare candies to level your Pokemon, then their stat increases are lower. Don't know if that's true, but it's what I've been told before in the past.

I find it fun to level a Pokemon that I like, thus killing the time. So if you want leveling to be fun, catch Pokemon you like, is my advice :D

 

[DrFuji]

If you can accurately judge the strength of the player at a certain point in a hack and you can change trainers/ wild Pokemon to reflect the player's power, then there is really no need to subject them to a boring grind (beyond raising a newly hatched Pokemon or something). Keeping the wild Pokemon and trainers varied will really help to keep the player engaged with the game as they will have to be on the lookout for random threats. Level curves should remain somewhat tied to the strength of the player - Possibly becoming steeper once the player nears the end of the game as by that time their Pokemon will be outclassing everything due to their accumulation of EVs and tutored/ TM/ HM moves.

I heard that if you use rare candies to level your Pokemon, then their stat increases are lower. Don't know if that's true, but it's what I've been told before in the past.

Yep, it won't get any EVs from Rare Candies.

 

[timaeus222]

Essentially the easiest way to make leveling less boring is these things:

- Make the available wild Pokemon different in such a way that it's fun to face them. i.e. add more interesting Pokemon, or switch out the more boring ones and place them somewhere else.
- Change the attacks on trainers' Pokemon to make use of the trainer AI and formulate a desired strategy that may or may not be followed by the trainer. EX: moves for a strategy-building Pokemon could be: Iron Defense, Belly Drum, Substitute, Baton Pass. One would assume Baton Pass wouldn't be used for a while, so then the stat increases, and possibly Substitute, would be transferred and the appearing Pokemon will pose a great challenge.
- Just ever so slightly increase the levels of trainers' Pokemon.
- Increase route size and add more trainers? All I've seen were ideas to cram trainers into a route that remained the same size.
- Give Gym Leaders more Pokemon. Even one more helps.
- Change learned moves for specific Pokemon. Better moves, more interest.

I heard that if you use rare candies to level your Pokemon, then their stat increases are lower. Don't know if that's true, but it's what I've been told before in the past.

Because Rare Candies don't increase the Pokemon's EV's. EV's are given from every Pokemon you defeat, in different stats depending on which one. EX: Gyarados gives 2 in Attack. Sites such as Psypokes.com give you that data. 4 EV's will increase a stat by 1 point when you level up one level. It's not very obvious, however, until you start nearing level 100.

I also have an EV Training guide if you need it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNYVltrht6k

 

[emperorsenshi]

increase the levels of all the trainer's pokemon. change their attacks as well to make fighting them take strategy. offers more fun for training and a higher reward for doing so.

 

[dragonite trainer]

This was on a real GBA, but...

Way back in 2005, I mixed records with my friend in Pokemon ruby. He had a level 100 Swampert (Water/Ground). I had a level 67Groudon that knew solar beam. In one hit (after I went to his secret base) I was able to defeat his swampert with a solar beam, which didn't need to charge due to Groudon's ability. My idea is to put trainers with DOUBLE TYPES that are both weak against a single type. It works. And in about 12 battles, it went from lvl. 67 to 100. Put them in a special gym or something so they all benefit.

 

[bilzandpap]

You guys are so lame.

Using YAPE you can change the growth rate of a GBA pokemon, the slower the growth rate the more experience the pokemon dishes out.

You could also make all wild Pokemon hold Exp. shares and Lucky Egg with YAPE then when u catch them you can give the lucky egg or whatever to the Pokemon you're leveling up

after I got the Lucky egg in white I never had a problem anymore so if you hack in a Lucky Egg then it'll be really easy

 

[montyb]

Sup. Old member, but new to posting, and just getting into learning to hack and script myself.

I've been thinking about this too, as I'm a perfectionist and love to see my pokemon at level 100, but feel like it's so boring since there's not much to do later in the games, and the last moves for most pokemon are learned from lv50-70.

I don't know about making the grind itself less boring, but perhaps upping the reward for doing it would help. My ideas would be:

-create new ultimate moves for each pokemon that they only learn at lvl90-100.
- maybe add some more crazy hard trainers towards the end, like trainers who have lv90-95 pokemon (which would also make it much easier to level towards the end when you're stuck battling lv50 Pokemon in the wild.
-I like the idea of items that help exp, but maybe to keep the challenge from suffering, make those items cut other stats while worn, like the macho brace, but have a bigger exp gain, but effect other stats. Or cursed items. like ones that greatly increase exp gain, but the wearer is always burned or paralyzed while wearing them.

Also, maybe if you're making your own maps, do something like outskirts to certain towns having unmonitored zones, where common wild Pokemon are at a higher level than normal.

Also, for the ultimate moves, I'd say take it in a different direction than just super-powerful attacks, there are enough of those. some pokemon could have a healing move that can revive a teammate, or auto revive them (but would only have maybe 1PP (PPmax bringing it only up to 2-3). Pokemon known for stat boost moves could learn a move that maxes out a single stat (like Steelix could learn a move that maxes defense. think belly drum without the hp cut) or visa versa, moves that minimize an enemies stat. Pokemon that use status effect attacks could learn a variety of things, a confusing attack that can't be snapped out of. A burn/paralyze/poison that effects the entire enemy team. There could be weather moves that last the entire match. and for fighting types, maybe a move like feint, but if used on a protected pokemon consumes all the remaining pp of that move. Even trap moves that, like the weather move ideas remain in effect for the entire battle.

also, maybe have a few that create certain special items by reaching a certain level.

That's all I got. Of course, as I said, these are more ways to make the payoff for the grind better, thus making the grind less of just an annoyance. this is the only way I can think of that wouldn't make the game too difficult or too easy throughout most the game. If you increase the pokemon stats so there is absolutely no need to grind, then it's easy, if you increase the level of everything else, than it becomes too difficult.

... I wish I were at the level I could implement these ideas...

 

[3HeadHoundoom]

I see that most hacks have too much wild grass areas, and not enough trainers. In the original Pokémon games, there was a perfect amount of trainers to raise your pokémon without the need for any wild battle grinding. The only problem the originals had (Before VS Seeker) was once you ran out of trainers there was nothing else but the elite 4 or grinding.

One quick simple solution would be to add some sort of training building, like the battle frontier, but you get EXP from the battles. An endless suplly of trainers! You can even have different level settings to choose from so it's not too tough or too weak.

 

[Gamerboy5440]

What I feel is the best, like many people said, is just to increase the available number of trainers, and raise wild pokemon level. The negatives to this is more from the availability of wild pokemon that are at a good level to immediately fit snugly into your team. To get around this, simply add actual difficulty, make most trainers ave good items, good learn sets, balanced teams, etc. You can also raise the levels, but like people have said, this simply add faux-difficulty, its not really harder, just more frustrating, and even in Rijon and Shiny X I never had to grind by simply being smart with pokemon choices and learn sets. On another note, whoever says that eating the ROM size is bad should realize we have ways of expanding ROM size, and in the context of even a lone gb ancient compy, 128 mb (8 times the original size) really isn't that big. Also the smallest HDD I've seen recently for sale was 10 gb, sooooo ROM shouldn't be an issue, as long as your willing to fill up the ROM with actual stuff and not just FF's and 00's.

 

[JustKidingYa]

acually you can speed it up to 1000%

 

[colcolstyles]

On another note, whoever says that eating the ROM size is bad should realize we have ways of expanding ROM size, and in the context of even a lone gb ancient compy, 128 mb (8 times the original size) really isn't that big. Also the smallest HDD I've seen recently for sale was 10 gb, sooooo ROM shouldn't be an issue, as long as your willing to fill up the ROM with actual stuff and not just FF's and 00's.

In case you aren't aware, the maximum size that a GBA ROM can be is 32MB. However, while this is a limitation, I doubt any hacker will find it binding unless they're very bad at space management and/or optimization.

 

[Putin]

I tried to solve this in an hack of my own (I won't talk about it here, as it accidentally shares a name with an hack in progress here, and I would like to avoid confusion), by making the early-game Pokémon (i.e. Pidgey, Spearow, Rattata) give a large amount of experience, resulting in easy grinding for the first part of the game and simulating, somewhat, the system used in BW, though not perfectly. The complaint I got was that it is too easy to overlevel now, making it difficult to catch lower-level rare Pokémon without KO'ing them.

A possibility I'm toying with for another hack-in-progress (not sure if such an idea has been mentioned, as I skipped the third page) is having areas in-game where you can easily EV-train and others with an Audino-equivalent that can be ground on to rapidly raise the level, possibly without EV's.

Something else, again, not sure if it's been mentioned, is to give the starters pickup, and change the items so that Rare Candy is very common at, say, levels 1-10, 21-30 and so on, and always available by Pickup; And to increase the EV's given by wild Pokémon so that it does not uneven the development of your team statistically.

Just tossing some ideas out there.

 

[xCalierz]

I've always had a huge amount of frustration from this.
It mainly stemmed from Pokemon Silver, where I'd be levelling and run into Raikou(?) completely unaware and get annoyed.
The time factor also sucks...
Anyway, I was thinking of training Gyms, where the trainers would reset everyday, or you could set the level that you wanted to train at.
My only problem is implementing it properly.

 

[Dragoncloud]

I can think of one solution, unfortunately due to the parameters of hacking it'd be very difficult to do this but instead of having levels adjust the experience system to increase independant stats based on the pokemon's DV's after each battle, but like I said, not likely to work in rom hacking, you'd be better off rebuilding the whole game in rpg maker if you use that approach.

I've always had a huge amount of frustration from this.
It mainly stemmed from Pokemon Silver, where I'd be levelling and run into Raikou(?) completely unaware and get annoyed.
The time factor also sucks...
Anyway, I was thinking of training Gyms, where the trainers would reset everyday, or you could set the level that you wanted to train at.
My only problem is implementing it properly.

I remember a place like that in Gold and Silver where you battled a trainer once per day. Usually it was a duplicate of the last trainer you fought in a link battle though. Although I suppose you could edit the script so that it duplicates you current pokemon's levels respectively.

 

[nukappa]

Why not make completing objectives give experience to all of your pokemon? Similar to quests in WoW.

Okay I usually dont get on here for anything but the emulators but this topic has me interested and this comment is actually a good idea....Imagine being able to do quests and then upon completion you get to distribute the experience points between the pokemon of your choice in your party...(lol idk if i worded that right) but yeah

 

[TTYO]

one thing in my wishlist thread in the game section was related to this.

The game designer could let the wild pokemon levels vary a lot wider. For example in the first routes of any generation, we see that Pokemon are always lvl 2-5.

We should have pokemon not just at lvl 2-5 but at 2 to 20 for example. This makes training faster should you defeat a pokemon higher level than your current starter.

BUT

I think a system where say a player pokemon gains EXP when it loses a battle can be useful too

 

[Blubber300]

I remember playing a game called, "Super Pokemon Eevee Edition" that used a Final Fantasy-like battle system... (found the thread!)

 

[Putin]

I've always had a huge amount of frustration from this.
It mainly stemmed from Pokemon Silver, where I'd be levelling and run into Raikou(?) completely unaware and get annoyed.
The time factor also sucks...
Anyway, I was thinking of training Gyms, where the trainers would reset everyday, or you could set the level that you wanted to train at.
My only problem is implementing it properly.

I believe all you have to do is remove the person ID, or remove the part of the trainer script that sets a flag, if you want a Trainer to be re-battlable; Make their line of sight 0 so you don't get stuck in a loop battling them, and can just talk to them to rechallenge. I'm sure it wouldn't be difficult to add an ASM command to check the date and set the flag after you win the battle, but remove it when the date is one day or more advanced of when the flag was set (making it a daily battle).

In RSE there were Gabby and Ty, a similar double-battle situation that were great for leveling, you just had to follow them around the region and could beat them dozens of times a day; they got progressively stronger until they gave good experience, and all you really needed was one good Pokémon with Earthquake and to give the Pokémon you were training Protect (and an experience share) to quickly level up weak Pokémon.