What if IVs/EVs/Natures were even more accessible?

[Raticate128]

Training a competitive-ready Pokemon isn't as tough as it used to be. But even in SwSh with all the (welcome) QOL improvements, it's still not exactly five minutes effort.

To increase a Pokemon's IVs, you have to get Bottle Caps and have the Pokemon undergo Hyper Training. Farming Bottle Caps can be quite a time consuming and repetitive process.

To increase EVs, you have to either buy expensive Vitamins, or EV train the ol' fashin way defeating specific Pokemon that yield specific EVs. To reduce EVs, you have to farm EV reducing Berries, and AFAIK there's a limit to how many you can collect each day.

To "change" a Pokemon's Nature, you have to use a Mint. Depending on whether you have the DLC or not these aren't toooo tough to acquire. But if you're unlucky you might have to wait a couple of days to obtain the one you need (best I can remember xD).

What if all of this was completely opened up? What if your job is simply to level up your Pokemon? For IVs, EVs, Natures, what if you could go into the menu, select something like "Advanced Stats" and go ahead and simply edit your IVs, EVs and Natures, using sliders and so on?

Would you see this as a positive change, or a negative one?

I think it's a good idea personally. People that don't care about the advanced stats can just complete the game's story and ignore them. But people that want to get into competitive battles can do so more quickly. But you still have to level up your Pokemon so it doesn't ruin the fact that these games are RPGs! It also might encourage more players who have less time to get into competitive battling.

I should probably mention I'm not a competitive battler which will obviously have an affect on my opinion. But I do raise sweepers for the game's battle facilities. xD

 

[colours]

something to keep in mind is that this generation as far as competitive battling is concerned is the easiest and most accessible it has ever been. swsh's crown tundra update introduced an item that allows you to directly modify your pokemon's ability in order for it to become a hidden ability. this is in addition to the fact that an ability capsule already exists as an item to swap back and forth between abilities, which is a boon if you need to switch pokemon abilities depending on your team composition

for natures, it's really much of the same thing. game freak hands you the ability to "change" (sort of) natures already through mints. you've acknowledged this in your post already, but i'd like to stress this is probably about as easy as it's going to get. what you're proposing really is eliminating the need for the item itself, but doing much of the same effect which is changing the nature to the player's own liking. if you're the type of person who's competitively minded enough to care about natures, then it isnt too hard to grind out the BP necessary in order to purchase the nature mints to begin with, imo.

EVs/IVs are kind of in an interesting spot, accessiblity-wise. iirc, the most effective way to "modify" IVs would have to be through selective breeding, depending on the type of person you are, this may be rather more time-consuming than necessary, especially if you're trying to aim for a 0 IV in a specific stat such as Speed in the case of Trick Room users or Attack for special attackers. perhaps there could be an easier way to modify IVs but for some reason i'm drawing blanks.

as far as vitamins go, in the new IoA expansion you can actually purchase vitamins in bulk for surprisingly cheap (or well, relatively cheaper than if you purchased them individually). i think EVs could be shown as a numerical value rather than as graphical data though, because fine-tuning EVs would require some note taking on the player's half. would be a lot easier if the game would just display how many EVs a pokemon has in a given stat in the summary screen.

tl;dr: while it is true that jumping right into raising a competitive team isn't a five minute effort, it's important to stress exactly how much easier it is to raise competitive pokemon now compared to in the past. heck, even egg moves are much easier to obtain now (and are relearnable, at that!) than they were in previous generations. getting a team ready does take some time, but that amount of time has been signfiicantly shortened (thankfully) in gen 8 which i think is a good thing.

/whoo long post

 

[Makaan]

It would heavily detract from the immersion of raising and training Pokémon, reducing it even further to just 'a numbers game'. However, they have already done that quite a bit with the alterations to Vitamins and addition of non-'Rare' Experience Candies, so now level 1 to 100 untrained to peak performance is just a matter of drugs, especially given that money is so easy to acquire. I have several times spent all of a maximised wallet on Vitamins, replenished the wallet, and then repeated both steps in the space of a few minutes.
I for one would prefer they not take that course, I struggle to grow attached to my Pokémon these days as it is. I can understand the reasoning, however - it would essentially be taking cues from Pokémon Showdown.

 

[Figure]

Funny enough, this would probably make me quit Pokemon completely. The games have become so easy and watered down that the only enjoyment I get out of them anymore is shiny hunting and breeding Pokemon for competitive battles (but not really doing battles because a 20 minute timer is fucking stupid). I really enjoy the process of having to breed perfect IVs and going to EV train my Pokemon in the wild while also increasing the shiny odds of the Pokemon I am training on.

Of course, the argument could be made that I can still train this way regardless of if you could just modify advanced stats but why would I? I have been saying for years that the games need to become harder not easier and if they made IV and EV training this braindead then the series would have nothing left to offer me.

 

[Nah]

I think that the situation we have as of SwSh is pretty good. Finally being able to change natures, give Pokemon hidden abilities, and removing the vitamin cap were the last main things I wanted in regards to this. That said, I wouldn't mind it being even easier. All breeding for IVs/natures/abilities and EV training is, is grinding. Grinding is not fun. I cannot ever recall playing a game where grinding was remotely fun.

Anyone's who seriously spent a significant amount of time in competitive battling, especially if via Showdown, can tell you that simply having max IVs and easy access to the EV spread/nature/ability you want isn't everything. There's other ways to make battles harder, and ones that are, imo, much better than number disparity or grinding.

 

[Zeostar]

Part of me would enjoy this, because I could do something silly like make a maxed IV and EV trained magikarp.

Then another part of me feels like it would ruin some of the appeal of the series. Suddenly the 'uniqueness' of every wild pokemon being different would be gone. It's like on Pokemon Showdown. I could easily copy a pokemon build I see someone using. But if I catch something in game, it's something that can't be replicated.

 

[Megan]

I think the only way to make things easier is incorporating a sort of style sheet type of menu that just straight up allows you to create any type of (legal) Pokemon. Similar to how Showdown handles things. Think of a battle facility (suppose online battles as well) that allows you to fill out a sheet for a party you want and then allows you to battle with them.
The big difference to your regular grinding adventure is that you don't own them per se. They are limited to said battle facility.

This takes out the entire process of acquisition. You just need to know what you want and be willing to fill out spread sheets. You could even have dedicated boxes where you can store those that you want to keep for battles and do some mix and match for different party combinations.

Would I like this to be a thing? The Pokemon "veteran" I am I'd probaly just complain about how nowadays nobody knows the "real" experience of getting competitive Pokemon by "hard work", etc.
But in honesty: I would just stop playing the games sooner. Breeding was one of the main time factors for me while playing the games apart from the main story.

 

[Sheep]

I honestly feel that changing IVs/EVs/natures has become a lot more accessible in SwSh but the thought of being able to change those stats on a whim still sounds interesting. I'm just....not sure if I'd want it? @_@ On one hand being able to do this would allow me to finally get so many mons with the ideal spread I'd want, while on the other hand it would cut my playtime in Pokémon games by a lot. Most of my postgame is spent breeding for that optimal set of IVs and without the effort going into it I'd put a lot less hours in the game. Being able to rework existing mons via bottle caps, mints etc is already really good for those of us who want to fix our starter/story team member or a random encounter shiny, and perhaps it's best being left at the same level of attainability it's at now for that reason. I feel I'd get too bored if all this needed was a few clicks.

 

[Pokedream.su]

I liked the EV training minigames that Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire did, I would also be for a way to in-game change a Pokemon's nature.

Honestly I don't think IVs were ever a good idea however.