I'd like to bounce an idea off you guys: Difficult Pokemon Without the Grind

[ArcTruth]

As with many who've grown up with the series, starting all the way back in Pokemon Yellow, I stomped my way through every game up to Emerald by virtue of simply throwing my starter out in every battle and being horrifically overleveled. After delving into communities here and there and seeing that this wasn't the only way to play, I used (slightly) fuller teams from then on out, but not much changed, although I did still enjoy the games.

It wasn't until I heard about the concept of the Nuzlocke that the idea of a difficult pokemon game came into my head and appealed to me wonderfully. Then I tried it, and discovered that I still run into the issues of level; to reliably keep my team alive (and usable), I had to spend quite literally hours grinding fresh catches in wild grass. It was not long before I just got bored. Interest in pokemon dipped a bit until I found Showdown and began to enjoy actually using these mechanics properly for the first time. I've since found romhacks, kept up with the series, and dabbled here and there in competitive, in gen3 hacking, in all sorts of stuff.

Then I had an idea, after looking at all these different takes on a difficult pokemon game, which brings me to my point: I think the idea of pokemon having levels could just as well go out the window.

At least, that's what first popped into my head. There's a simpler implementation though. My reasoning, as concise as I can make it.

• Your choice of pokemon is irrelevant so long as levels can completely dictate a battle.
• Grinding freshly caught pokemon takes incentive out of expanding your team, which can be enjoyable.
• The nuances of the combat system are often washed away when brute force solves everything.
• Removing levels takes the focus of the game off of how much experience your pokemon have, placing it instead on your choices and your playstyle.

My solution to this problem is honestly very simple: treat every pokemon as if it were level 100 in regards to stats at all times. Level-up moves and evolutions would remain unchanged. Differences in stats would be dictated entirely by IVs and EVs.

I'm going to make a list of pros and cons off the top of my head, what I've come up with so far. And to clarify, this is from the viewpoint of being applied to a 3rd gen ROM in the interest of increasing difficulty and enjoyment.

PROS

Spoiler:

• A wild pokemon caught at any level would be usable instantly.
• Gym Leaders would not have to be restricted to level-appropriate pokemon, for the most-part.
• Every trainer could pose a potential threat.
• Even extended trips encountering wild pokemon can be dangerous, hopefully instilling a sense of adventure on long routes.
• A strict, leveled path would not be necessary, allowing for a much more open world.
• Rewards solid team structure and strategies.

CONS

Spoiler:

• Experience rewards and growth rates would need to be completely revamped.
• AI flaws may become more prominent.
• Margin of error for balance may become narrower (can simply grind levels in normal hacks if too difficult).
• Potentially controversial, as it's changing a fundamental aspect of the game. Many players may not like the experience changing so drastically.
• Nuzlockes would be terrifyingly difficult. (possible PRO?)

But to finish this post, let me discuss implementation. I think I've summed up the major changes that would need to be made in just a few points.

1. Revise the way stats are calculated to treat every pokemon as if it were level 100.
   
   Spoiler:

   Hopefully, this would be as simple as changing a coefficient in one or a handful of places.
2. Rebalance experience growth rates and battle rewards.
   
   Spoiler:

   The way I came up with to handle this is to simply tie it to EVs; gain experience points equal to the number of EVs you get (maybe x10 or x100 for appearances) regardless of level. To follow that up, rather than using the traditional growth curve, with a little research I found that the graph of 3ln(x) (throw it into WolframAlpha for visual) can be rounded out to a total of about 1090 experience points. A pokemon starting from level 1 would then be level 55 once fully EV-trained without any items, and could have them completely reset and be re-trained before reaching level 100. It seems to me a simple and solid basis from which to approximate the various growth rates.
3. Overcome issue of EV training once Lv. 100 is reached.
   
   Spoiler:

   This could be handled one of two ways: either run the stat recalculation normally done upon level up at the end of every battle instead (as in the later generations) or just put in an item that reduces level by 1.
4. Balance to satisfaction.
   
   Spoiler:

   Points of interest include:
   

   • Improving access to Move Tutors, relearners, to help facilitate quick and effective team synergy.
   • Giving trainers' pokemon EVs to increase difficulty. Most could be randomly assigned, with Gym Leaders' and such optimized.
   • Refining pokemon selection of all trainers and gym leaders.
   • Revising levels, availability of any/all wild pokemon. Making an area difficult could be as simple as flooding it with strong pokemon.
   • Considering rates of encountering wild pokemon to keep from overwhelming trainers with, for example, souped-up Zubats and Golbats.
   • Moving and rearranging scripted, mapped, and HM-implemented area blocks.

With the importance of EVs, some tools for players to manage them more easily wouldn't go amiss; EV checker, access and/or alternative to the EV-dropping Berries, cheaper vitamins, Power Items and Macho Brace, possible training areas, etc.

I've likely forgotten and overlooked a great many pros and cons due to a combination of excitement, and idealism, so don't hesitate to offer any. Tried to be concise, so if something's not clear don't hesitate to ask, either. Hope you guys like the idea.

 

[Spherical Ice]

Surely this sort of system would just lead to longer battles in the earlygame, where moves are weaker, and faster battles in the lategame? The way I see it, if everything is at level 100, basically nothing is, and that removes the difficulty that would come about from level inequalities, which are not always an inherently bad way of increasing the difficulty of specific battles.

 

[Touched]

I don't think that this is feasible from an implementation perspective in an indirect sort of way. For stats, "treating everything as level 100 without it being so" is quite easy actually. Just change the function that calculates the actual stats for party Pokemon to use level 100 instead of the actual level. However, you forget that the AI is pretty terrible. It's only really capable of making decisions based on type match-up and some abilities (i.e. it can counter abilities like Wonder Guard, and I have seen code which seems to use Natural Cure). However, that's basically as smart as it gets. You mention nuances, but there are none: brute force is basically the only way the AI increases difficulty; Battle Frontier just uses EVs to buff up enemy teams. If you remove level inequalities, you basically remove the difficulty - all battles would become the same, tedious affair.

You cite removing the need to grind as one of the key issues for implementing this. However, this is not the only solution to that problem. For example, you could just break grinding entirely by adjusting the experience calculation to grant no experience if the defeated Pokemon is of a lower level than you. Therefore, you could only gain experience by moving on to higher-levelled areas. This would also solve the problem of unbearably long battles that Spherical Ice pointed out.

Maybe you should test the feasibility of this by either implementing the hack I suggested (changing the actual stat calculation) or by manually levelling everything to Lv 100 and seeing how that works with a standard play-through.

 

[Minty Mouth]

Surely this sort of system would just lead to longer battles in the earlygame, where moves are weaker, and faster battles in the lategame? The way I see it, if everything is at level 100, basically nothing is, and that removes the difficulty that would come about from level inequalities, which are not always an inherently bad way of increasing the difficulty of specific battles.

IMO difficulty in Pokemon games is at its best when you are exactly the same level as the opponents. All my personal playthroughs use level limits to stop me going above the level of the next gym leader's highest pokemon. So I think this solution would work in that sense.

But you're right about the length of battles. In the early game battles would be too long because using bubble on a pokemon with 100 SpD and HP is not going to put a dent on it. (EDIT: Actually thinking about this more, if all Pokemon stats were set at lv100 then the attacking pokemon would have a high attacking stat, too, so the only mitigating factor that could slow down battles here would be move base power, which is the same condition as normal level curves. So actually, battles wouldn't be any slower or faster than they would be if the levels tracked like I suggest below.)

[This is irrelevant after editing] I think a solution that would make more sense is if enemy pokemon scaled to your current pokemon levels - both for wild pokemon and trainers (with wild pokemon being set a level or two lower, trainers on point, and gym leaders a level or two higher). I don't know if that's possible, but they do it in games like Skyrim (I think). This would make level curves a non-problem and difficulty perfect. [/This is irrelevant after editing]

EDIT: In summary, I really like this idea and think it would actually work perfectly. If you, OP, could implement this into a game (maybe on it's own to make it less work) just to test it, I would love to give it a try.

 

[machomuu]

Since grinding is a big thing for me in gaming (In regards to gaming, I talk about this all the time in the VG forum)- hell, I talked about something similar to this in the DCC. Actually, lemme grab that:

Dark Rising only ever boosted legendary stats on the E4, where, in addition to being comically over-leveled like everything else in the hack, you had to deal with 800+ BST legendaries stuck in the middle of full teams- the champ then proceeded to use all of the E4's aces alongside a 1010 BST Lugia with 200 BP Dark STAB. It wasn't really approachable without gratuitous amounts of item spamming cheese or surgical over-preparation as your pokemon were fairly vanilla. That said, talking about Dark Rising's use of...pretty much anything...is a rather boring subject as most of the time the answer is "it sucked".

Ah, thanks for clarifying. So we're talking sharp level curves to create fake difficulty that can only be combated through level grinding or cheating. In that case, yeah, I don't like them. To the point where I don't think they should be included even as difficulty patches, because that's not how you create difficulty and make a game fun. Good game design allows for difficult play without tons upon tons of grinding, and to be truthful, I think any hack that requires grinding without an efficient way to gain experience has succumbed to bad game design, because all it grinding does is bore the player.

With regard to the more interesting topic of high-stat single-enemy bosses in general: Difficulty can come from many sources, but Pokemon's mechanics work best when the enemies are on the same playing field as the player. Bosses are generally many normal enemy Pokemon against the player's many normal Pokemon- breaking the mold with a singular inflated boss enemy requires careful handling as you either get a comical anti-climax (see BW2's Kyurem battle) or an uninteresting, demoralizing clean wipe if you didn't prepare (see a certain hack's level 70 Kyurem encounter prior to the 4th badge). I don't think making a superboss be fair is impossible, but making it a serious threat to a prepared player while still being interesting and fair against someone with six all-out attackers is unlikely. There's far too many ways to cheese a single enemy in Pokemon, such that taking all the options away would make the game much less interesting- type advantage, Toxic, Paralysis, Destiny Bond, OHKOs, Curse, Perish Song, Leech Seed, Charm/Light Screen, Sand Attack+Recover, Spite, Disable, Encore, Hyper Potion/Revive spam, timely crits/brightpowder/misc. hax...the list goes on. There's also very little reason to switch when there's only one foe, which simplifies things even more.

Yeah, there'd have to be a lot of changing to be done. Not just on a stat level, you'd have to restrict the possible moveset and make it so that the boss is self sufficient, to the point that they can take care of themselves without being complete sweepers. And that's kind of the problem. With my hack I'm using a party of individuals gathered throughout the story, so it's not a particularly difficult issue because the types the player has in their disposal and the moves they might have will be fresh in my mind, so I can design the bosses (and the available moves) around that framework.

But with Pokemon, you're right, it's not so simple. And I really think a large part of that stems from the fact that Pokemon is a game where the enemies' Pokemon can be just as strong as the players' (because, in a sense, every pokemon has the potential to be your pokemon). This is why the "mob" enemies exist as wild pokemon, and those pokemon are only weaker due to lack of EVs, lower levels, intentionally lackluster movesets, and the simple AI. Because Pokemon is a game where every pokemon is meant to be caught, and the challenge and difficulty of the games, because of the number of options, is more in the hands of the player than it is the developers (depending on various things).

But I really do wonder if creating a character/Pokemon with high HP/Def/SP Def could make for a real challenge. This is what I had in mind, but I do have my doubts. My hack is very boss-based and, other than my own, I'm a big fan of Pokemon hacks that feature boss battles (which are few, for reasons we've been over) because they allow for a plethora of new avenues in storytelling to be explored. I mean, I would assume that, should the boss be self sufficient in ways where status problems wouldn't be fatal, but could still deal damage (unless that specific boss is immune), somehow maintain his accuracy, possibly be immune to OHKO/Suicidal attacks, and not just not be completely borked by 1-2 takedown strategies, then it could make for a challenging boss, but looking at the list of things that can bork the bosses really makes making a boss seem like a challenge in itself.

Of course, this was in response to making a boss rather than simply making the game difficult, but I'd say it still applies to the overall discussion.

 

[ArcTruth]

EDIT: In summary, I really like this idea and think it would actually work perfectly. If you, OP, could implement this into a game (maybe on it's own to make it less work) just to test it, I would love to give it a try.

I'm very glad you like the idea. If I had any idea how to do this I would in a heartbeat; was toying with the idea when I first started dabbling in hacks about a year ago, but couldn't find any documentation about where the relevant offsets might be, and I've almost no idea where I would begin looking. Off the top of my head, I faintly recall something that converts the hex into Assembly, which i can read with some difficulty. May look into that.

However, you forget that the AI is pretty terrible. It's only really capable of making decisions based on type match-up and some abilities (i.e. it can counter abilities like Wonder Guard, and I have seen code which seems to use Natural Cure). However, that's basically as smart as it gets. You mention nuances, but there are none: brute force is basically the only way the AI increases difficulty; Battle Frontier just uses EVs to buff up enemy teams. If you remove level inequalities, you basically remove the difficulty - all battles would become the same, tedious affair.

I have not forgotten, that's #2 in my list of Cons. You're absolitely right, the AI is indeed going to be a big hindrance to this truly being the game of my dreams. However, I think if anything, this is still an improvement over the norm. Right now, you as the player are basically just as locke into brute force using any kind of stall, status, or nuance takes a great deal more time and effort to set up compared to just adding another powerhouse to your team.

If your opponent's pokemon have a type advantage and power to use it, you could well lose a sweeper (many of which are quite fragule and can't take a switch). This makes stall tactics totally viable ti have in the bag to bail you out of tight situations (Blissey, Poison Heal Gliscor, Prankster Sableye, etc.) and means that your sweepers better have coverage and be able to set up sufficiently.

Or that's my hope, at least. You say implementing it would be simple; is there somewhere you could point me that would explain how to go about doing this?

 

[InfamousX]

I think a good way to increase difficulty to enourage thinking and strategy is to limit the healing items the player can use. Make healing items expensive or limit the amount of money the player can get, so they have to ration and use their items wisely. Ruby Destiny Life of guardians did this pretty well (but you could just spam perish song lol).

Another thing is to take note of the pokemon the player would have encountered and probably caught so far in the game and make the bosses team counter a significant portion of them. so if the starter is squirtle and the pokemon so far enountered are birds, rock types etc, make the boss team electric and grass based for example.

You can also make a script to cut the pokemons hp by any amount you want and then start the battle, so the player is at a disadvantage. Theres many things you can do.

 

[mgriffin]

I'm excited to see that I'm not the only person who has been thinking along these lines! I think that just balancing the levels doesn't go far enough, in-battle items lead to Full Restore spam, and that takes all the difficulty out of the game. Instead I'd have the party heal between battles, like in the Battle Tower.

In my opinion we already have a series that deliver high difficulty with almost zero grind, and it adapts to the player's skill: Pokémon Showdown. Once we put battles on an even playing field we can scale the difficulty by fiddling with the parameters of our AI. Obviously this requires some very intelligent AI, albeit you could probably compensate somewhat by giving the AI additional or more powerful Pokémon. I don't have such an AI to offer you, but I would love to be involved in an effort to develop one! I suspect that for casual to intermediate players looking just 2–3 moves into the future and identifying which 'mons are most threatening to the player's team (and thus not risked) would provide a fair challenge.

You suggested that you'd keep EVs and level-up moves the same, and I presume you'd also leave natures and evolution as-is. I'm not a huge fan of that, because you're still asking trainers to grind (in the case of natures catching many 'mons) so that they can get the most out of their team. IMO the player should have access to unlimited-use EV/nature changing NPCs and TMs. I don't know what to do about evolution, maybe expand the set of elemental stones, any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

I think that something has to be done to make wild Pokémon encounters more interesting as without exp there's little point of doing any battles once I've scouted out what's available in the area. Again I'm at a loss for suggestions.

I don't mean to criticize, and I'd certainly play your game through to completion when it's done. I look forward to seeing how you develop the idea, so please keep this thread up-to-date! :)

 

[ArcTruth]

Spoiler:

I'm excited to see that I'm not the only person who has been thinking along these lines! I think that just balancing the levels doesn't go far enough, in-battle items lead to Full Restore spam, and that takes all the difficulty out of the game. Instead I'd have the party heal between battles, like in the Battle Tower.

In my opinion we already have a series that deliver high difficulty with almost zero grind, and it adapts to the player's skill: Pokémon Showdown. Once we put battles on an even playing field we can scale the difficulty by fiddling with the parameters of our AI. Obviously this requires some very intelligent AI, albeit you could probably compensate somewhat by giving the AI additional or more powerful Pokémon. I don't have such an AI to offer you, but I would love to be involved in an effort to develop one! I suspect that for casual to intermediate players looking just 2–3 moves into the future and identifying which 'mons are most threatening to the player's team (and thus not risked) would provide a fair challenge.

You suggested that you'd keep EVs and level-up moves the same, and I presume you'd also leave natures and evolution as-is. I'm not a huge fan of that, because you're still asking trainers to grind (in the case of natures catching many 'mons) so that they can get the most out of their team. IMO the player should have access to unlimited-use EV/nature changing NPCs and TMs. I don't know what to do about evolution, maybe expand the set of elemental stones, any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

I think that something has to be done to make wild Pokémon encounters more interesting as without exp there's little point of doing any battles once I've scouted out what's available in the area. Again I'm at a loss for suggestions.

I don't mean to criticize, and I'd certainly play your game through to completion when it's done. I look forward to seeing how you develop the idea, so please keep this thread up-to-date! :)

I can see the reason behind a lot of what you said, but bottom line here is that I'm not looking at making Showdown the Adventure, but instead improving the experience of the game we know and love while changing as little as possible. Battle is not the be-all, end-all of pokemon, not for me and not for a huge chunk of the playerbase. Exploration is huge, as is a feeling of accomplishment as you whip your team into shape and take on all comers.

As far as the AI goes, I think that project would be an enormous undertaking in its own right; I, and I suspect all but a double-handful or so of the users here, have only a small amount of experience in coding. Only enough, in my case, to know that finding and revamping the AI in the mess of assembly that is the 3rd gen games would be difficult, to say the least.

As it is, though, the lackluster AI works in our favor, as it means players can use slightly sub-optimal pokemon and still have great success. For the perfectionists though, the reduced xp load would mean that catching or hatching a pokemon with appropriate nature and IVs would not be a big deal; by the time you've got it EV trained, the majority will then be evolved already and the rest will take only a few minutes of training to get to that point and have all the level-up moves needed.

The wild encounters wouldn't be to provide reward to players, although that's not a bad idea. Their primary purpose would be to add to that sense of exploration and adventure. This would rely on the wild pokemon having a high chance of not letting the trainer escape when they try to run, meaning you have to fight or risk them getting in a free hit. As far as reward goes... of the top of my head, being rewarded with any items the wild pokemon is holding at the end of battle would be a simple way to do it, and hopefully not tough to implement. May require rebalancing of wild held items.

 

[miksy91]

An idea somewhat close to what others have suggested would be hacking the "EXP amount received" (= calculated from the level of the enemy and base EXP given rate of that pokemon) & "EXP amount required to level up" functions.


If you for example changed these functions so that each time pokemon gains a level, it both requires and gives 1.5 times the amount of EXP it would require (or give) at the previous level. This would make a huge difference quite fast;

If pokemon Y would require X amount of EXP to level up from lv19 to 20, it would require (1.5)^5^ * X = 7.6* X amount of EXP to level up from lv24 to 25. Then again, for example 1.5 ^ 6 = 11.4 > 10.
Basically, each time you gain 6 levels, you start getting 1000 EXP instead of 100, next time 10000, 100000, 1 000 000 etc. This would require some working out though because the game is only meant to store experience as a 3-byte value probably (which basically means that the maximum amount of EXP you can have is 256^3 - 1 = 16 777 215. But if this was stored as a 4-byte (or maybe 5-byte) value instead, that could be changed either into over 4 billion or 1 trillion.

But yeah - this kind of change would easily implement the functionality for making it practically impossible to be too many levels ahead of the enemies encoutered on the area you are on.

 

[ArcTruth]

Spoiler:

An idea somewhat close to what others have suggested would be hacking the "EXP amount received" (= calculated from the level of the enemy and base EXP given rate of that pokemon) & "EXP amount required to level up" functions.


If you for example changed these functions so that each time pokemon gains a level, it both requires and gives 1.5 times the amount of EXP it would require (or give) at the previous level. This would make a huge difference quite fast;

If pokemon Y would require X amount of EXP to level up from lv19 to 20, it would require (1.5)^5^ * X = 7.6* X amount of EXP to level up from lv24 to 25. Then again, for example 1.5 ^ 6 = 11.4 > 10.
Basically, each time you gain 6 levels, you start getting 1000 EXP instead of 100, next time 10000, 100000, 1 000 000 etc. This would require some working out though because the game is only meant to store experience as a 3-byte value probably (which basically means that the maximum amount of EXP you can have is 256^3 - 1 = 16 777 215. But if this was stored as a 4-byte (or maybe 5-byte) value instead, that could be changed either into over 4 billion or 1 trillion.

But yeah - this kind of change would easily implement the functionality for making it practically impossible to be too many levels ahead of the enemies encoutered on the area you are on.

While that solution does circumvent the issue of changing stat calculation, it does not circumvent the issue with levels dictating success rather than choice of pokemon and how you wield them, so to speak. Which means past areas are going to be vastly underleveled by comparison, requiring once again the level-restricted path we're familiar with.

The numbers and the implementation seem meaninglessly complex to me as well, though that's more a personal opinion thing than a flaw in the idea. At least, with some tweaking they'd be fine; as is, if it's 10 xp from lvl 1 to lvl 2, we're looking at 10,000,000,000,000,000 xp at lvl 99. I know that'd be scaled to xp gain, but there's no reason we need to use numbers that big and it'd likely make a mess of the code. No need to use doubles when we're working with assembly.

I appreciate you brainstorming ideas here though. The best laid plans often go awry, as the saying goes, so having alternative solutions is excellent.

 

[miksy91]

While that solution does circumvent the issue of changing stat calculation, it does not circumvent the issue with levels dictating success rather than choice of pokemon and how you wield them, so to speak. Which means past areas are going to be vastly underleveled by comparison, requiring once again the level-restricted path we're familiar with.

The numbers and the implementation seem meaninglessly complex to me as well, though that's more a personal opinion thing than a flaw in the idea. At least, with some tweaking they'd be fine; as is, if it's 10 xp from lvl 1 to lvl 2, we're looking at 10,000,000,000,000,000 xp at lvl 99. I know that'd be scaled to xp gain, but there's no reason we need to use numbers that big and it'd likely make a mess of the code. No need to use doubles when we're working with assembly.

I appreciate you brainstorming ideas here though. The best laid plans often go awry, as the saying goes, so having alternative solutions is excellent.

It shouldn't be difficult at all to pull out a change such as what I suggested here. Of course, that "1.5" there is a factor that is seemingly way to high, so it could possibly scale better if it was for example 1,2 instead.


Anyway, I didn't realize you were meaning to make it possible to catch pokemon from anywhere, no matter how far you are in the game, to make use of those caught pokemon. So of course by taking that in consideration, doing this exp function hack wouldn't work out.

 

[azurile13]

For me, although I understand the appeal of competitive battling, I think that appeal is greatly diminished when you're playing against AI. Because of this, I believe level variation is very important for the in game playing experience. That said, from what you've said in the OP, why do you even want the current form of EV training to begin with? You can't "grind" to be a higher level than your opponent, but you can still "grind" to have superior EV spreads. Surely it would be better to control "EV's" with a completely different system, most likely from the overworld. For example, defeating trainers gives you points that you can then use to alter the "EV's" of your pokemon. You could also alter the system to control the amount of EV's any of your pokemon can have based on where you are in the game.

 

[ArcTruth]

That said, from what you've said in the OP, why do you even want the current form of EV training to begin with?

Because an important part of playing pokemon is feeling like your team is growing and improving under your direction, imo. It's obviously entirely an opinion thing, but keeping at least some part of that core gameplay aspect, improving your pokemon through battle, would be important for me to include in any hack. Others who used it could ignore this, obviously, and even I would, if possible include tools for players to use to make EV training less of a guessing game and much less of a grind; cheap vitamins, readily available EV berries or an alternative, and early access to macho brace and/or power items at minimum. But it kind of comes down to philosophy of pokemon, I guess.

 

[machomuu]

Because an important part of playing pokemon is feeling like your team is growing and improving under your direction, imo. It's obviously entirely an opinion thing, but keeping at least some part of that core gameplay aspect, improving your pokemon through battle, would be important for me to include in any hack. Others who used it could ignore this, obviously, and even I would, if possible include tools for players to use to make EV training less of a guessing game and much less of a grind; cheap vitamins, readily available EV berries or an alternative, and early access to macho brace and/or power items at minimum. But it kind of comes down to philosophy of pokemon, I guess.

But then it comes down to something else, really. Competitive battling requires very carefully trained Pokemon, and goading that type of idea is fine, but then you have to wonder if it's fun. Because the difference between competitive battling and every other RPG out there (save for MMOs) is choice. In the former, you're trying to optimize your team, and generally this is done by choosing a specific set, picking the best moves, and designing a team with a specified purpose and counters. With the latter, though...well, it's more of a personal thing. Pokemon is a series about collecting Pokemon, so when you introduce this idea that restricts choice, you remove a lot of the appeal. And this isn't just for Pokemon- most RPGs or- hell, even most games (again, save for MMOs) give you the choice to do what you favor, and so long as you take responsibility for the choices you make then you can continue on. Even with this, games can stand to be difficult.

But my point is that you don't have to make the game competitive level or a time shaver for it to be difficult. There are other ways, and I can't really see a Pokemon game where competitive teams have trouble against AI opponents being truly difficult and fair. And, when you really get down to brass tacks, if you spend all of this time worrying about EVs, limiting your options, and the like, at the end of the day once you actually do create this optimal team...well, that's it. There won't be a sense of accomplishment, since it will likely be a one-time thing, there won't be constant feelings of progress because you're not being rewarded in a meaningful sense (unless you do provide a way for a meaningful reward to be given), and if you hit an enemy that's a well then you just have to do more grinding, and in that sense I can't much see how that would be fun.

 

[ArcTruth]

Spoiler:

But then it comes down to something else, really. Competitive battling requires very carefully trained Pokemon, and goading that type of idea is fine, but then you have to wonder if it's fun. Because the difference between competitive battling and every other RPG out there (save for MMOs) is choice. In the former, you're trying to optimize your team, and generally this is done by choosing a specific set, picking the best moves, and designing a team with a specified purpose and counters. With the latter, though...well, it's more of a personal thing. Pokemon is a series about collecting Pokemon, so when you introduce this idea that restricts choice, you remove a lot of the appeal. And this isn't just for Pokemon- most RPGs or- hell, even most games (again, save for MMOs) give you the choice to do what you favor, and so long as you take responsibility for the choices you make then you can continue on. Even with this, games can stand to be difficult.

But my point is that you don't have to make the game competitive level or a time shaver for it to be difficult. There are other ways, and I can't really see a Pokemon game where competitive teams have trouble against AI opponents being truly difficult and fair. And, when you really get down to brass tacks, if you spend all of this time worrying about EVs, limiting your options, and the like, at the end of the day once you actually do create this optimal team...well, that's it. There won't be a sense of accomplishment, since it will likely be a one-time thing, there won't be constant feelings of progress because you're not being rewarded in a meaningful sense (unless you do provide a way for a meaningful reward to be given), and if you hit an enemy that's a well then you just have to do more grinding, and in that sense I can't much see how that would be fun.

You've got a lot of solid points here. Best I can offer is that self-imposed challenges, like those Nuzlocke players take on, will take on a different flavor here and hopefully be easier to do; for example, I have no doubt that just about any half-decent pokemon player could beat the braindead AI of the Elite 4 given a stacked Ubers or even just OU team. Those looking for a challenge could throw together an RU or NU team and try against the E4's specced out UU/OU spread, or try monotype teams.

Bottom line I think is that we're getting into philosophy here. I think it's pretty widely understood that the vanilla games are not hard. Many, many players have thus chosen to change this somehow, whether through limiting themselves (Nuzlocke, Shuckle or Magikarp runs, etc.) or through changing the game itself (you guys here). The former all rely on the integrity of the player, while the latter implement hard-coded rules and paths to follow. They all have varying levels of success and are enjoyed by differing players to differing degrees.

This idea I've had is falling into that second category; it's another strategy to increase the difficulty of the game, and how successful it could be remains to be seen. In a sense, it's a very powerful form of level scaling. Creating an optimal team is one way for players to enjoy a game. And they can do that in any pokemon game with, as you said, no more progress from that point out. How they choose to enjoy it otherwise is up to the player.

 

[Touched]

Or that's my hope, at least. You say implementing it would be simple; is there somewhere you could point me that would explain how to go about doing this?

I didn't see you'd quoted my post, lol.
Overwrite the bytes at 0x03E544 with 01 90 64 20 00 90 28 1C 38 21 01 AA (FireRed)
This changes the stat calculation to use level 100 instead of the actual level. You can still level up and learn moves, but your stats are unchanged except for EVs. Be aware that the beginning battles are awful. You run out of PP for tackle/scratch/etc every battle and Potions and things are useless. I just turned on autofire A and fast forward because it was so terrible.

 

[ArcTruth]

I didn't see you'd quoted my post, lol.
Overwrite the bytes at 0x03E544 with 01 90 64 20 00 90 28 1C 38 21 01 AA (FireRed)
This changes the stat calculation to use level 100 instead of the actual level. You can still level up and learn moves, but your stats are unchanged except for EVs. Be aware that the beginning battles are awful. You run out of PP for tackle/scratch/etc every battle and Potions and things are useless. I just turned on autofire A and fast forward because it was so terrible.

Well shit. That's... very simple. I don't suppose you have the offsets for Emerald offhand?

Regardless, just leaves xp calculation to modify. As far as early-game slowness goes... wouldn't be hard to rearrange early movesets to include some STABs, or just start at level 7 or whatever things are. Thank you so much, man. I'll probably get started on this tonight.

 

[Touched]

Well shit. That's... very simple. I don't suppose you have the offsets for Emerald offhand?

Regardless, just leaves xp calculation to modify. As far as early-game slowness goes... wouldn't be hard to rearrange early movesets to include some STABs, or just start at level 7 or whatever things are. Thank you so much, man. I'll probably get started on this tonight.

Haven't tested it, but emerald seems to be at 0x068DD4 (same bytes)

 

[Minty Mouth]

I didn't see you'd quoted my post, lol.
Overwrite the bytes at 0x03E544 with 01 90 64 20 00 90 28 1C 38 21 01 AA (FireRed)
This changes the stat calculation to use level 100 instead of the actual level. You can still level up and learn moves, but your stats are unchanged except for EVs. Be aware that the beginning battles are awful. You run out of PP for tackle/scratch/etc every battle and Potions and things are useless. I just turned on autofire A and fast forward because it was so terrible.

Wait, I don;t understand why the early battles are slow.. I mean, obviously if you tested it and that's how it was, I can't argue with that, but if your attacking stats as well as the defending stats are raised equally, (or to a similar standard) shouldn't that balance out?