cough almost every legendary cough
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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
If there's ever a moment to say "RIP Headphone Users", that is it.
Anyway, let's admire the luck here. Almost full health, no multipliers whatsoever, base catch rate of 3. That's basically the equivalent of stumbling across consecutive wild shinies back in the 8192-to-one days. How are these people so lucky?
When I went around catching Legendary Pokémon in matching Poké Balls back in ORAS, I specifically decided to use a Nest Ball on Groudon. It was so fun.
Talking of which I used a Master Ball on Mewtwo and Rayquaza. Sure, it isn't exactly matching colours and they're such easy legendaries to catch, but... I like to think of them as a sort of status-of-power type of thing. Like Mewtwo and Rayquaza (and probably Arceus) are the only ones so high-up as to deserve the honour of being in that ultimate Poké Ball.
Talking of which I used a Master Ball on Mewtwo and Rayquaza. Sure, it isn't exactly matching colours and they're such easy legendaries to catch, but... I like to think of them as a sort of status-of-power type of thing. Like Mewtwo and Rayquaza (and probably Arceus) are the only ones so high-up as to deserve the honour of being in that ultimate Poké Ball.
I remember in Emerald, I caught Groudon at full health with a Dive Ball. Because of the irony, I HAD to keep it and raise it up.
Guys in pokemon diamond/pearl/platinum it is possible to catch Regigigas with a repeat ball! I reckon the repeat ball actually has a higher rate of capture than an ultra ball
While most monster franchises perhaps put the numbers too low, I do prefer the concept some other games try to bring some times.
For example, the "Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker" series has a system where your monsters have to "impress" the stronger with their strength, and that determines your percent chance to recruit the monster. I like this for a few reasons
- It places more value on the strength of your monsters, rather than just carrying the right item in enough quantity like Pokeballs.
- There's some more tactical options to improving capture: Buffing and Debuffing the monsters, simply using stronger monsters, picking monsters with offensive traits or things like Double Hit. In Pokemon, every capture does essentially go the same: weaken mon, status mon, wall mon until Pokeball takes.
- More direct application of the battle system to capture things makes it easier to avoid Gamebreakers like capturing Metal Slimes (which is the equivalent of being immune to Special Attack moves) beyond simply encountering the mons at random and then getting lucky with the capture
This system does have some shortcomings of its own, but I do like that it means training old mons isn't a total wash if you replace them, thanks to this and the Synthesis (a bit like breeding) system, while being less RNG dependent overall.
For example, the "Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker" series has a system where your monsters have to "impress" the stronger with their strength, and that determines your percent chance to recruit the monster. I like this for a few reasons
- It places more value on the strength of your monsters, rather than just carrying the right item in enough quantity like Pokeballs.
- There's some more tactical options to improving capture: Buffing and Debuffing the monsters, simply using stronger monsters, picking monsters with offensive traits or things like Double Hit. In Pokemon, every capture does essentially go the same: weaken mon, status mon, wall mon until Pokeball takes.
- More direct application of the battle system to capture things makes it easier to avoid Gamebreakers like capturing Metal Slimes (which is the equivalent of being immune to Special Attack moves) beyond simply encountering the mons at random and then getting lucky with the capture
This system does have some shortcomings of its own, but I do like that it means training old mons isn't a total wash if you replace them, thanks to this and the Synthesis (a bit like breeding) system, while being less RNG dependent overall.
Most people like to use ultra balls but you'll find that if possible, I like to use repeat balls
I'm pretty sure that was Gen 2 Kurona.
If I remember correctly:
The Love Ball caught pokemon of the SAME gender you had caught before with an 8x capture rate. Love indeed
The Moon Ball is literally a more expensive pokeball, due to a glitch that makes the catch rate 4x on pokemon that evolve with a BURN HEAL
And the Fast ball is glitched to work on a grand total of Magnemite, Grimer, and Tangela.
If I remember correctly:
The Love Ball caught pokemon of the SAME gender you had caught before with an 8x capture rate. Love indeed
The Moon Ball is literally a more expensive pokeball, due to a glitch that makes the catch rate 4x on pokemon that evolve with a BURN HEAL
And the Fast ball is glitched to work on a grand total of Magnemite, Grimer, and Tangela.
What are you referring to when you tag me?
I meant when Mewtwo (and I think the legendary birds?) could blatantly just dodge your Poké Balls. I think the rate of it meant it was impossible to catch Mewtwo in a normal Poké Ball and you had to use either Ultras or the Master.
While a much more interesting mechanic, how much is Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker like Pokemon? Pokemon is sort of made to have its capturing work within the game, like I don't think Pokemon would exactly work with Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker's capture system.
For example they sort of had a similar "recruiting" system in Pokemon Conquest where you're given a recruitment requirement and to me it didn't feel quite right for Pokemon (though to be fair some of the requirements are usually defeat the Pokemon in 5 turns and that's barely enough time to get over to it let alone defeat it).
Pretty similar area-by-area progression, though with visible encounters rather than randoms. Battles are slightly more "standard RPG", with monsters getting skill trees naturally or inheriting them through Synthesis, granting skills instead of each individual species getting a particular unique learnset. All that said, I'd say if you like Pokemon it's fairly easy to get into Joker with a slight adjustment period early game.
Conquest's recruitment mechanics didn't bother me too much, since two of them came naturally to the mechanics. If I remember right, the 3 options to recruit a warrior were
- KO in 4 turns or less
- KO them without taking damage (not sure if from them or at all)
- KO with a Super Effective move
Only time it became tricky was with Featured Warlords, since in addition to one of the above, they had to be finished off by a Warlord of your own.
Repeat ball-this poke ball works especially well when you have already caught the pokemon...
Uses it on an ordinary pokemon...2 wobbles
Uses it on Regigigas...3 wobbles...then aw shoot! It missed!
I haven't caught Regigigas before...why would I have?
Uses it on an ordinary pokemon...2 wobbles
Uses it on Regigigas...3 wobbles...then aw shoot! It missed!
I haven't caught Regigigas before...why would I have?
The amount of wobbles is completely unrelated to how likely you are to catch something. It's an entirely different formula that calculates it.
In addition there's this little thing called luck. It's totally possible to catch say a Deoxys at full health with no status conditions with a luxury ball if you're just that insanely lucky.
It can be done by putting them to sleep, get their health down, and keep on chucking your balls at them ( and pray a lot ).
That's a game mechanic. In Gen I, that was how the game showed the first ball check failing. At the time, speed did a lot more than determine who went first in a fight.
For a more common example, try throwing a Safari ball at a Chansey in the Safari Zone. Half of them will end like this, a quarter will maybe shake once, etc.
Not exactly. Each wobble resembles a ball check, where the RNG rolls against the pokemon's catch rate. You need to pass four to catch the Pokemon, but in Gen 5 they added this feature where if your pokedex has a certain amount of pokemon, there's a 1/512 chance of it only needing two.
And when you're trying to catch Kyurem and even THAT fails, well...
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But the thing is is that the repeat ball is supposed to have the same chances on a pokemon on you've never caught before as an ordinary ball and yet it does better. 4 wobbles=catch
I'm not entirely sure you're understanding the concept of luck here...
Luck? luck doesn't exist (or does it?)
As a guy who deals with probability literally all the time in my actually PhD work, I love you just for this statement.
I have legit captured legendary Pokemon at full health with Poke Balls. That does not mean that the Poke Ball is better than the 100 Ultra Balls that would break while trying to capture a Deoxys in the red. I caught a 4 IV Cresselia at half health with a single Heal Ball. That doesn't mean it's an easy capture. Pretty much the one ball that's not luck-based is the Master Ball.
To put it differently, if you constantly threw a Poke Ball at a full health Kyogre, you would have had a 50% probability of capturing it within about 175 Poke Balls so it's bound to happen.
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Here's a new related unpopular opinion: I actually like how legendary Pokemon have lower capture rates (aside from roaming legendaries). They actually make it feel like a real "boss battle" compared to the standard Pokemon aside from being "stronger"
Poke balls are less likely to catch a pokemon than the ultra balls, I know that and I know that even poke balls still have a chance to capture a legendary pokemon but what I was saying is that it is extremely rare.
Not sure if this is an unpopular opinion, but I believe it's one that isn't voiced very often: The Pokémon games are too successful for their own good.
In negotiations theory, there is a concept called "the winner's curse", and I believe it applies in business as well. Basically, it says you can be too successful. If you're allowed to dictate all terms by yourself, and have no opposition to your policies, you fail to separate good decisions from bad ones. Everybody will nod and smile along no matter what you say (that is, not bootlicking, you've genuinely convinced them your idea is a good one), even if what you say is plainly idiotic. In the end, your own flaws end up becoming the flaws of the system/project/company, and there's no feedback telling you things are heading the wrong way until a disaster happens. I believe the Pokémon franchise, especially the main series games, is showing symptoms of "winner's curse".
As it stands today, the games are hugely successful, and will sell tons of copies by virtue of the word "Pokémon" in the title alone. Their popularity preludes their quality. Their content, gameplay and other qualities hardly matter anymore, almost no matter what they do, Nintendo is bound to earn loads of money every time a main series Pokémon game is released. That's a good thing in many regards, but a bad thing in others, for several reasons:
1. It lets the creators get away with lazy solutions. What's the term, again? "Fat and happy"? Game Freak are allowed to give some parts of the game a slack. We've reached a point where people buy their games because it's Pokémon, not because the games themselves are good. So what if water routes are functionally a mess, if the concept of IVs promotes excessive grinding, if the story is stale and essentially copied from game to game and if the Anime is boring, repetitive and dull. Fans will buy the games despite their flaws. Money keeps pouring in. If sales numbers is any indicator, the system clearly works. No need to make an effort. A good illustration is how Game Freak keeps cutting out features between games, only so they can use their re-introduction as selling points in later games. Game Freak make their games worse on purpose, and still earn lots of money.
2. It stifles innovation. See above. If the current system works well, to the tune of billions of dollars, why change anything? The franchise appears to be a finely tuned money machine, intricately built and set up for optimal enjoyment by players and monetary earnings for the developers. Just look at the sales numbers! The current recipe appears to be the winning recipe, and changing anything brings an inherent risk of failure. The current system brings in the Benjamins, and has done so for several years. The same can't be said with certainty if anything is changed. Thus, the executives are afraid of changing anything. And why should they? Again, the franchise prints money! Well...
3. It masks flaws in the games. Quite self-explanatory. Money keeps pouring in, so how is Game Freak supposed to know when to make changes? There is a whole host of things to complain about with the current state of the franchise, but none of that will impact the sales numbers in any meaningful way. Games will be bought, fun will be had, complaints will be made but ignored. The games all feature the same clichéd story, with only slight nuance differences between games. Certain game mechanics bring nothing but frustration, yet have to be endured or else the player is put at a disadvantage. The Anime is a joke. Stuff like this damages the reputation of Pokémon, but not its profitability. Thus, fixing it is not a very big priority. Especially in light of the next point...
4. It makes it hard to gauge success. Okay, so changes are made. What happens? The games sell like hotcakes. Was the change good? Bad? Did people notice/bother at all? No idea, it can't be heard over the "ka-ching!"s of incoming money. If a game is bad, people might be less inclined to buy the next game, but the response to a change is way too delayed to give any meaningful immediate feedback. Us fans have our forums where we loudly voice our opinions, but the casual players who make up the bulk of the sales might see things differently than we do, and respond differently to changes. What makes a feature good or bad? How well the games sell with/without it? Too bad, the games sell extremely well anyway, so that parameter can't be measured.
Overall, we're left with sub-optimal games, and Game Freak has little incentive to make changes because they earn money no matter what they do. So much more could be done, but they get away with laziness because nothing seems to impact the bottom line. In the worst case, we might end up with a Sonic situation, with gradually worse and more unpopular games, but which still earn their money back and then some because of an excellent brand. That is, until one day the brand is no longer good, the games are no longer profitable, and the developers can't figure out why. "It worked so well until it didn't" is commonly heard in such situations. There will be few indications before the collapse. Efforts to fix the problems often end up being "we must change the recipe back like it was in the glory days", unaware that the "glory days" had the same flaws, only that people weren't as aware of them back then. Still, it's not as easy as just fixing things, because it's nearly impossible to tell if a change is for the better or worse.
All in all, a little bit of sudden rough times - or some competition - wouldn't hurt the franchise, in my opinion. It'd make the developers realize that some effort is required, and that the waterfall of money may one day slow to a trickle if nothing is done. Right now, there are few incentives to innovate and make proper efforts, and the risks appear greater than any potential gains. Why do 5 % more to make the games 50 % better, when the sales numbers appear to remain unaffected? Why not save the 5 %, sit back and enjoy success? Winner's curse, that's why.
In negotiations theory, there is a concept called "the winner's curse", and I believe it applies in business as well. Basically, it says you can be too successful. If you're allowed to dictate all terms by yourself, and have no opposition to your policies, you fail to separate good decisions from bad ones. Everybody will nod and smile along no matter what you say (that is, not bootlicking, you've genuinely convinced them your idea is a good one), even if what you say is plainly idiotic. In the end, your own flaws end up becoming the flaws of the system/project/company, and there's no feedback telling you things are heading the wrong way until a disaster happens. I believe the Pokémon franchise, especially the main series games, is showing symptoms of "winner's curse".
As it stands today, the games are hugely successful, and will sell tons of copies by virtue of the word "Pokémon" in the title alone. Their popularity preludes their quality. Their content, gameplay and other qualities hardly matter anymore, almost no matter what they do, Nintendo is bound to earn loads of money every time a main series Pokémon game is released. That's a good thing in many regards, but a bad thing in others, for several reasons:
1. It lets the creators get away with lazy solutions. What's the term, again? "Fat and happy"? Game Freak are allowed to give some parts of the game a slack. We've reached a point where people buy their games because it's Pokémon, not because the games themselves are good. So what if water routes are functionally a mess, if the concept of IVs promotes excessive grinding, if the story is stale and essentially copied from game to game and if the Anime is boring, repetitive and dull. Fans will buy the games despite their flaws. Money keeps pouring in. If sales numbers is any indicator, the system clearly works. No need to make an effort. A good illustration is how Game Freak keeps cutting out features between games, only so they can use their re-introduction as selling points in later games. Game Freak make their games worse on purpose, and still earn lots of money.
2. It stifles innovation. See above. If the current system works well, to the tune of billions of dollars, why change anything? The franchise appears to be a finely tuned money machine, intricately built and set up for optimal enjoyment by players and monetary earnings for the developers. Just look at the sales numbers! The current recipe appears to be the winning recipe, and changing anything brings an inherent risk of failure. The current system brings in the Benjamins, and has done so for several years. The same can't be said with certainty if anything is changed. Thus, the executives are afraid of changing anything. And why should they? Again, the franchise prints money! Well...
3. It masks flaws in the games. Quite self-explanatory. Money keeps pouring in, so how is Game Freak supposed to know when to make changes? There is a whole host of things to complain about with the current state of the franchise, but none of that will impact the sales numbers in any meaningful way. Games will be bought, fun will be had, complaints will be made but ignored. The games all feature the same clichéd story, with only slight nuance differences between games. Certain game mechanics bring nothing but frustration, yet have to be endured or else the player is put at a disadvantage. The Anime is a joke. Stuff like this damages the reputation of Pokémon, but not its profitability. Thus, fixing it is not a very big priority. Especially in light of the next point...
4. It makes it hard to gauge success. Okay, so changes are made. What happens? The games sell like hotcakes. Was the change good? Bad? Did people notice/bother at all? No idea, it can't be heard over the "ka-ching!"s of incoming money. If a game is bad, people might be less inclined to buy the next game, but the response to a change is way too delayed to give any meaningful immediate feedback. Us fans have our forums where we loudly voice our opinions, but the casual players who make up the bulk of the sales might see things differently than we do, and respond differently to changes. What makes a feature good or bad? How well the games sell with/without it? Too bad, the games sell extremely well anyway, so that parameter can't be measured.
Overall, we're left with sub-optimal games, and Game Freak has little incentive to make changes because they earn money no matter what they do. So much more could be done, but they get away with laziness because nothing seems to impact the bottom line. In the worst case, we might end up with a Sonic situation, with gradually worse and more unpopular games, but which still earn their money back and then some because of an excellent brand. That is, until one day the brand is no longer good, the games are no longer profitable, and the developers can't figure out why. "It worked so well until it didn't" is commonly heard in such situations. There will be few indications before the collapse. Efforts to fix the problems often end up being "we must change the recipe back like it was in the glory days", unaware that the "glory days" had the same flaws, only that people weren't as aware of them back then. Still, it's not as easy as just fixing things, because it's nearly impossible to tell if a change is for the better or worse.
All in all, a little bit of sudden rough times - or some competition - wouldn't hurt the franchise, in my opinion. It'd make the developers realize that some effort is required, and that the waterfall of money may one day slow to a trickle if nothing is done. Right now, there are few incentives to innovate and make proper efforts, and the risks appear greater than any potential gains. Why do 5 % more to make the games 50 % better, when the sales numbers appear to remain unaffected? Why not save the 5 %, sit back and enjoy success? Winner's curse, that's why.
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