Is Breeding Pointless & Can it be fixed?

[Meister_anon~Master_o f_None]

It occurred to me that with all the tools and options we have for making custom pokemon, or the best pokemon with romhacking, that there's next to no reason to use breeder mechanics in an emulated pokemon game.

This goes for both binary and decomp hacks.

Even if you're not playing a romhack, you can use tools like pokegen to change whatever you want about any pokemon you've caught.


So I want to know, what's the romhack community opinion, is breeding pretty much worthless at this point?

Also what changes would be needed to make it relevant again?
No idea's too crazy I just want to hear whatever you've got.

Like maybe selective breeding could give a bonus to one stat both parents have high IVs in.

Or maybe gain one type resistance of the father pokemon. maybe not enough to change effectiveness but something like reducing damage taken by a quarter. If something is super effective instead of taking 2x you'd take 1.75x normal damage could go from 1x to .75x.

Enough to make a difference but not completely break typing.


I'm open to any ideas, those are just my thoughts.


edit:
Also if you're willing I'd appreciate you checking out my other survey thread about the infatuation status.
https://www.pokecommunity.com/threads/446672

 

[LunaticRose]

Your argument is based entirely on the notion that everyone will cheat. I rarely do, and I know there is a strong sentiment with many that it drains all the fun out of the game. While many others do not share this sentiment and will hack whatever they want into the game, the breeding mechanics were not implemented with them in mind and if you create the system you describe it is only a matter of time should it become popular enough before it gets cracked and someone is distributing a tool get the result out of it you want for no work.

The real drawback is the relative limit of multiplayer availability, which is the only time you really need a carefully honed team in poke'mon unless someone makes a truly insane difficulty hack. I know some emulators have options for this but not how widely they're used.

 

[Meister_anon~Master_o f_None]

Your argument is based entirely on the notion that everyone will cheat. I rarely do, and I know there is a strong sentiment with many that it drains all the fun out of the game. While many others do not share this sentiment and will hack whatever they want into the game, the breeding mechanics were not implemented with them in mind and if you create the system you describe it is only a matter of time should it become popular enough before it gets cracked and someone is distributing a tool get the result out of it you want for no work.

The real drawback is the relative limit of multiplayer availability, which is the only time you really need a carefully honed team in poke'mon unless someone makes a truly insane difficulty hack. I know some emulators have options for this but not how widely they're used.

I see no problem with people making what they want of it, that's the nature of progress, take what works and build on it to make your life easier.
Its a game(solo-player at that), people should be able to play however they want.
And there's a reason multiplayer isn't in hacks, (as far as I know) its extremely difficult has even more potential legal issues than just romhacking, (like setting up a server specifically so people can come together to use someone else's copyrighted assets online) There's some decomp hacks that have it apparently, but that's not really the topic here.

Its not about cheating or trying to make the game easy, the point I'm making is the great thing about breeding or pokemon in general was being able to have the team you want, exactly as you want them. And with current advancements, there's 0 reason to use the old breeding mechanics to do so.

radical red, has ability capsules to change abilities, items to change nature, reset evs, & give perfect IVs, features like that make it far less tedious then constantly going back and forth trying to find a perfect ditto, or a pokemon in the egg group with the right nature, and then the item to make sure the nature transfers or boost the odds. Then wait till it hatches to see if it got the right ability and the right gender then start over if it doesn't.


The way breeding is now, its rng on top of rng on top of rng, all for things that can currently easily be got elsewhere through other methods.

And if you just want to think only of regular main game, Ability Capsules were created in Gen 6, so if you don't care about perfect IVs or nature, instead of breeding you could just use the capsule, and not have to worry about trying to catch a new pokemon.

So the idea isn't "everyone would cheat" its "if you have better options available to you, why wouldn't you use them".
And if you rightfully assume that people would, then the obvious conclusion is no one would use breeding.


The point of this topic is to figure out how to modernize a system that has barely received an update
since the day it was implemented all the way back in gen3.

I have my own ideas, but this would be a major element to change which is why I'm trying to get ideas or concensus
from the community at large.

You said breeding shouldn't be changed but do you even use it?

 

[Daydeus]

In my opinion, pokemon games focus on two things. On one hand, you have exploration and discovery, through unexplored regions and seeing new pokemon. On the other, you have the satisfaction of making your chosen pokemon stronger and overcoming challenges.

The core mechanic has always been battling. Whether beating trainers to strengthen your team and progress the story, or catching wild pokemon to add to your team.

Breeding is interesting in that it provides an alternative to battling in pokemon acquisition. It also serves to deepen the "world-building" of pokemon and give a means of acquiring more competitive pokemon. And in each successive generation Nintendo has made breeding more effective at producing powerful pokemon, such as the ev-training items allowing for passing certain IVs and the everstone/nature trick.

I've always found breeding grindy, repetitive, and necessary for having perfect pokemon. With the freedom to make my own hack, I see no reason to limit myself to "canon" mechanics.

Rather than follow the trend of breeding allowing for better, stronger pokemon, instead I recommend we look at the other side of the coin. We can encourage the feeling of discovery by looking at the example of baby pokemon.

Baby pokemon can't be met in the wild, and can only be obtained by breeding. Now, I hate baby pokemon, because they're gimmicks with poor stats and useless for battling. Instead, what if there were whole species that could only be acquired by breeding two other species?
What if the sharpedo evolutionary line could only be acquired by breeding a member of the garchomp line with a member of the water1 egg group?

It would need some tweaking, but it could be fun to breed different species to try and find something you couldn't acquire otherwise.

 

[LunaticRose]

I see no problem with people making what they want of it, that's the nature of progress, take what works and build on it to make your life easier.
Its a game(solo-player at that), people should be able to play however they want.
And there's a reason multiplayer isn't in hacks, (as far as I know) its extremely difficult has even more potential legal issues than just romhacking, (like setting up a server specifically so people can come together to use someone else's copyrighted assets online) There's some decomp hacks that have it apparently, but that's not really the topic here.

Its not about cheating or trying to make the game easy, the point I'm making is the great thing about breeding or pokemon in general was being able to have the team you want, exactly as you want them. And with current advancements, there's 0 reason to use the old breeding mechanics to do so.

radical red, has ability capsules to change abilities, items to change nature, reset evs, & give perfect IVs, features like that make it far less tedious then constantly going back and forth trying to find a perfect ditto, or a pokemon in the egg group with the right nature, and then the item to make sure the nature transfers or boost the odds. Then wait till it hatches to see if it got the right ability and the right gender then start over if it doesn't.


The way breeding is now, its rng on top of rng on top of rng, all for things that can currently easily be got elsewhere through other methods.

And if you just want to think only of regular main game, Ability Capsules were created in Gen 6, so if you don't care about perfect IVs or nature, instead of breeding you could just use the capsule, and not have to worry about trying to catch a new pokemon.

So the idea isn't "everyone would cheat" its "if you have better options available to you, why wouldn't you use them".
And if you rightfully assume that people would, then the obvious conclusion is no one would use breeding.


The point of this topic is to figure out how to modernize a system that has barely received an update
since the day it was implemented all the way back in gen3.

I have my own ideas, but this would be a major element to change which is why I'm trying to get ideas or concensus
from the community at large.

You said breeding shouldn't be changed but do you even use it?

I think I largely misspoke, and I apologize. I didn't say breeding shouldn't be changed, or at least didn't mean to, what I meant is that you shouldn't design a game around how people will cheat. My advice is cheaters will cheat, ignore them, make the game with the assumption the average player won't. Sounds like you're already doing that, so I'm being redundant in telling you this.

You are right that I don't use the breeding mechanics much, I don't need them often, and they're tedious. So the best way to improve it would be to lessen the tedium. Easiest way to do that is to reduce hatching times which are obnoxious. Probably possible to make a utility that reduces egg steps by dividing them all by a number you choose, I'd say between 5 and 10 to start with, adjust from there. Or you could do it all manually I suppose if you'd find that easier.

Another more complicated option that would take more work would be to bend the RNG to be more favorable. Make it so instead of randomly producing IVs you could take the highest IV of each stat from both parents and then at random add a value to each IV, perhaps 0-4, more (like say 5-10 or 0-max) if you really want to strap rockets onto how fast getting perfect IVs happens. This also eliminates the need for Destiny Knots in breeding.

An item or two could also be added to ensure the gender of the offspring (example would be new kinds of incense, one for each gender), removing one element of the RNG altogether. Alternately instead of making these items that the breeding poke'mon hold, make them items you can use, (and for accessibility purchase) at the breeding facility. Or just have them be a service you can buy and not clutter inventories.

In making the system more fun perhaps increasing the array of egg moves each poke'mon has. This is usually what I use the breeding system for: getting poke'mon with unusual movesets, since coming up with unusual movesets is always something I have fun with in any RPG that lets me.

As for as these various items you mentioned, I must admit I haven't played Radical Red, so I'm unfamiliar with most of them. And they make several of my suggestions somewhat redundant. Though, I imagine for balance their prices are somewhere between a vitamin and a gen V+ TM. Which means expensive, so breeding would be an alternate option: invest time or invest money.

Hope I'm more helpful this time. I know I haven't suggested new mechanics, but I'm hoping to at least make the old ones more viable.

Rather than follow the trend of breeding allowing for better, stronger pokemon, instead I recommend we look at the other side of the coin. We can encourage the feeling of discovery by looking at the example of baby pokemon.

Baby pokemon can't be met in the wild, and can only be obtained by breeding. Now, I hate baby pokemon, because they're gimmicks with poor stats and useless for battling. Instead, what if there were whole species that could only be acquired by breeding two other species?
What if the sharpedo evolutionary line could only be acquired by breeding a member of the garchomp line with a member of the water1 egg group?

It would need some tweaking, but it could be fun to breed different species to try and find something you couldn't acquire otherwise.

I've seen other MonCol genre games do things like this. And it's usually kind of fun, though it does add a level of complexity to planning all this out on the dev's side of things. If you're planning to include all current poke'mon though it does create a way to not overclutter your wild encounter tables by shifting part of the burden to breeding.

 

[Meister_anon~Master_o f_None]

Breeding is interesting in that it provides an alternative to battling in pokemon acquisition. It also serves to deepen the "world-building" of pokemon and give a means of acquiring more competitive pokemon. And in each successive generation Nintendo has made breeding more effective at producing powerful pokemon, such as the ev-training items allowing for passing certain IVs and the everstone/nature trick.

I've always found breeding grindy, repetitive, and necessary for having perfect pokemon. With the freedom to make my own hack, I see no reason to limit myself to "canon" mechanics.

Rather than follow the trend of breeding allowing for better, stronger pokemon, instead I recommend we look at the other side of the coin. We can encourage the feeling of discovery by looking at the example of baby pokemon.

Baby pokemon can't be met in the wild, and can only be obtained by breeding. Now, I hate baby pokemon, because they're gimmicks with poor stats and useless for battling. Instead, what if there were whole species that could only be acquired by breeding two other species?
What if the sharpedo evolutionary line could only be acquired by breeding a member of the garchomp line with a member of the water1 egg group?

It would need some tweaking, but it could be fun to breed different species to try and find something you couldn't acquire otherwise.

(whistles) now that's what I'm talking about! Thanks for some good feedback.

Sounds like you're saying with time put in to properly set up the effect breeding could be a way to acquire an entirely unique evolution line not seen/available elsewhere specifically because the branch is only availabe/starts with the baby form. Wow I like that. Then the requirements for splitting off from the main evo-line could be something like, breeding with a pokemon from a certain/specific egg group.

That's exactly the kind of thing I was talking about, breeding imo just needs to be less grindy/tedious, a bit less random, and provide some benefit you can't already get elsewhere.


Makes me wish I was good at spriting, dude at some point you should definitely try to do that, that's a really cool idea.

I could probably make the effect, but I probably couldn't fully realize the idea, since I think that would require making new sprites and species to evolve into and possibly new baby forms/pre-evolutions for some, to really make it a system worth investing in.

I'll probably give it a try though, maybe use that for getting alternate forms, like I could do a ratticate with a dark egg group pokemon to get alolan rattata. And do that for other alolan and maybe galarian forms?

Thanks for sharing.

 

[mgriffin]

Sounds like you're saying with time put in to properly set up the effect breeding could be a way to acquire an entirely unique evolution line not seen/available elsewhere specifically because the branch is only availabe/starts with the baby form. Wow I like that. Then the requirements for splitting off from the main evo-line could be something like, breeding with a pokemon from a certain/specific egg group.

Some existing, related ideas to this:
- Pokémon Infinite Fusion, which lets you combine any two Pokémon and (iirc) their learnsets. It does it via an item, but it could work via breeding.
- this thread.
- Mirage of Tales (unreleased, GIF from Discord) has a feature that lets baby Pokémon take colors from their fathers, and inverts egg moves so that each species has a list of moves it passes onto any offspring, e.g. any offspring of an Excadrill can learn Dig and Metal Claw, the rationale is that this makes egg moves much more predictable.

*

I very much agree with the sentiment that breeding takes far too long to do, and that the payoff is so small that it's not worth the effort. Especially in ROM hacks where perfect IVs is rarely necessary.

I imagine it could also be interesting to allow baby Pokémon to inherit abilities, base stats, typing, etc from their fathers.

* There's a bug that allowed Porygon to breed, which is how Roggenrola was able to acquire the colors.

 

[Yak Attack]

I think breeding could use a lot more work, like a chance for the baby pokemon to inherit level up moves from the opposite species parent and the option, per species line, to inherit the ability from the opposite species parent. I also think a move reminder at the daycare would be useful. Those suggestions combined with an option for easy breeding where the pokemon breed faster and the eggs hatch faster would make breeding a lot more exciting and enjoyable, in my opinion.

 

[Outwitter]

I've never been a fan of breeding concept as the overall process is not only tedious and boring per se, but the returns are also so miniscule and unsatisfactory that never considered it worth the time and attention. It's true that we might be able to get some exclusive egg move through breeding, however, as far as teaching moves is concerned, there are plenty of other options for it by means of TMs, HMs, Move Relearner and Move Tutors etc.

Likewise, breeding for Suitable Nature and Perfect IVs is conceivable, but modern hacks nowadays are providing ample of options for purposes like this through Nature Changer, IV Perfecter, Ability Switcher, IV reducing berries and so forth.

Conversely, if breeding could fetch me something meaningful and smart, e.g., a Bug/Fire Butterfree offspring obtained by breeding a Butterfree and some Fire type pokemon, thereby allowing me to acquire a watered down version of Volcarona for myself, consequently ushering new gameplay possibilities and strategies. The idea is slightly unorthodox yet worth exploring! The concept is somewhat familiar to Infinite Fusion, however, too much of the variants might shift the focus from mainstream pokemons or even make the breeding procedure itself clichéd and cheap. For this reason, limited / constrained breeding that produces a custom variant / chimera that has inherited a combined typing from both the parents along with their unique abilities and stab moves might act as a solid incentive for people to step in, experiment and eventually obtain their dream pokemon! :)​

 

[pokemon fan person]

if you, want you can breed pokemon. you don't have to.

 

[Meister_anon~Master_o f_None]

if you, want you can breed pokemon. you don't have to.

true, but I really don't like pointless/useless things, so if it can be better I'd prefer it to be.
even if it means making the change myself.


Thanks for taking the time to comment & share your thoughts though, I appreciate that.

 

[Hexx17]

in my opinion breeding is a thing you implement for fun egg moves that dont fit the theme of the pokemon.

 

[spottedfirestar]

I really like breeding as a concept, but I find that within most hacks there are improvements so you don't feel the need to breed to get the right stats/nature/ect that you want, if at all. Which isn't a bad thing...

but if you want it to be used more I think the people above me have fantastic ideas such as the poke fusions and type changes, the only other thing that I can think of, Is that if you were to use contests in any way, is that maybe breeding pokemon and having a good linage, or having better looks could be a boost in that area and could be an option? Though I know that contests aren't really a thing that happen in most fan games.

 

[Meister_anon~Master_o f_None]

I really like breeding as a concept, but I find that within most hacks there are improvements so you don't feel the need to breed to get the right stats/nature/ect that you want, if at all. Which isn't a bad thing...

but if you want it to be used more I think the people above me have fantastic ideas such as the poke fusions and type changes, the only other thing that I can think of, Is that if you were to use contests in any way, is that maybe breeding pokemon and having a good linage, or having better looks could be a boost in that area and could be an option? Though I know that contests aren't really a thing that happen in most fan games.

Right now I'm not planning on setting up contests, but I can see how that can work/be cool.
Like having a father pokemon of a specific type or egg group(provided its a different species from mother pokemon), could give a boost to the base value of one of the 5 contest values.


beauty, cool tough, cute, etc. It wouldn't be everything but it would be easier to win the early stages of contests,
and possibly make certain evolutions easier, such as the beauty based one, and would cut down on the number of pokeblocks/etc.
you'd need to raise those stats.


I like the idea though, providing a benefit outside of just general battles. very nice.

 

[Prof. Balsa]

Breeding has been a staple of Pokémon since Gen 2, so imo removing it makes the game not really Pokémon, even if you can just cheat lol