Unpopular opinions

[Siggu]

And then they forced the Exp. Share to be on.

I know LGPE did it first and SnS actually has a good level curve if you're rolling with 6 mons, but geez, really?

Imagine rolling with 19 and 16 Pokémon in those games. I was underleveled at several points, even with the help of the Exp. Share.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

Imagine rolling with 19 and 16 Pokémon in those games.

Ok, but why tho.

At this point, you don't need just the Exp. Share, you need like, a dozen Lucky Eggs...
Maybe a whole omelette.

 

[Rapti]

I know LGPE did it first and SnS actually has a good level curve if you're rolling with 6 mons,

Imagine rolling with 19 and 16 Pokémon in those games. I was underleveled at several points, even with the help of the Exp. Share.

Really? really?
HOW?

I went thought most of S&S with 30 pokemon and at every single point in the game I was at risk of overleveling, I had to resort to running around with only one or two pokemon at a time just to prevent them from being at a higher level that the next Gym Leader!


What do you guys even do in these games?
do you like never even touch the grass and only know what you can encounter in the grass from Bulbapedia?
do you use like 1 of your "team" and have no idea what the rest of your pokemon even do and just watch them level up?
what do you guys even do in the wild area?


Sincerely, how are you playing thing these games, what are you letsplaying them and thus skipping like 90% of the games, are you guys poketubers? do I need to call the cops!!?

 

[Pikachu315111]

I went thought most of S&S with 30 pokemon and at every single point in the game I was at risk of overleveling, I had to resort to running around with only one or two pokemon at a time just to prevent them from being at a higher level that the next Gym Leader!

What do you guys even do in these games?
do you like never even touch the grass and only know what you can encounter in the grass from Bulbapedia?
do you use like 1 of your "team" and have no idea what the rest of your pokemon even do and just watch them level up?
what do you guys even do in the wild area?

I think they could ask you the same question. What grinding sessions did you do where you had 30 Pokemon at risk of overlevelling?

I myself just stuck with 6 Pokemon, swapped out ones I didn't feel were working but the new member quickly caught up. All I did was caught the new Pokemon on the route & battled all the trainers on the route. I didn't grind, mostly because I didn't need to as even with doing this bare minimum my team of 6 were usually overlevelled. However I imagine if I was constantly swapping in other "back-up" Pokemon the experience would start to thin out considerably. And even with that I found myself in an interesting situation where before facing Leon my team was for once underlevelled! Felt actually exciting even after I used the Exp Candies to get them on even level.

 

[Coronis]

Well since we're on the topic of difficulty let's throw my hot take: Pokemon games' difficulty is 90% based around how you play it.

Anytime someone says "oh come on X game is too easy" I have callbacks of two particular Emerald runs I've done. One, a solo run with Mudkip where I leveled Marshtomp to level 24 on Route 103 because... I don't even know honestly. And, the other one, a Nuzlocke where I deliberately underleveled.

Now, I have mentioned how much I've replayed the Gen 3 games. So I pretty much knew what to expect on each major battle. Even with that, that Mudkip run had no casualties and the Nuzlocke ended with 15 casualties, including the final battle against Tate&Liza where I got wiped out because my highest leveled Pokemon was 37.

Now I understand that it may sound like a slight hyperbole. And, it might be. So I have a better example:

Colosseum was BRUTAL. I just played that game, and maybe I missed something, but I found it brutal compared to any other games and I do believe it is the hardest Pokemon game I've played (perhaps even more than, dare I say it... Pokemon R a n g e r). I finished the game with a team of Legendary Beasts + Flygon, Quagsire and Espeon, which considering the choices wasn't too bad a team. The main thing tho, was the levels. It never crossed through my head to spend a few hours grinding because idk why, so I came facing these level 60 final battles with level 47-49 Pokemon. Having to catch one Pokemon in each final battle, even with the Master Ball glitch, doesn't help. Explains why I got wiped out a total of 5 times between the two of them. I'm terrified of how XD will be like...

Anyways, the point is, a good part of how hard a Pokemon game is comes from how you go about your game, most of which is from how much you level and how good/bad your team selection is. If you're that one psycho who spends hours grinding on first-route Pokemon, that might explain why it's easy. If you're five levels below your opponent, that might explain why you're stuck.

Probs not unpopular but can they redo Colo and XD for the Switch or something. Could never find em for a reasonable price online befofe my Wii got stolen =/

 

[Rapti]

I think they could ask you the same question. What grinding sessions did you do where you had 30 Pokemon at risk of overlevelling?

I myself just stuck with 6 Pokemon, swapped out ones I didn't feel were working but the new member quickly caught up. All I did was caught the new Pokemon on the route & battled all the trainers on the route.

See I sincerely don't get this

how did you know what new pokemon where in the grass without literally looking it up in Bulbapedia if you didn't spend some time running around in each route grass?
what did you do in the Wild Area? it's literally just a place that has several spawns all over the place which change daily

Like, sure, you don't care about overleveling but for those that do I don't see how you could possibly not overlevel
for example, when I did the 4th gym I entered 2 levels lower than the gym leader, my Diggersby ended up higher level than Gengar just by doing the challenge, which meant that in order to not be overleveled for the next gym leader I literally could not bring him, nor any of the other pokemon I brought with him, to the next route
and this is not an isolated incident, if I had not limited myself to two or less pokemon each route about half my team would have evolved without me ever using them and that's saying nothing of exploring the wild area

 

[Pikachu315111]

See I sincerely don't get this

how did you know what new pokemon where in the grass without literally looking it up in Bulbapedia if you didn't spend some time running around in each route grass?

Of course I didn't look it up on Bulbapedia... I used Serebii. They're faster at updating their Pokemon World pages than Bulbapedia.

What did you do in the Wild Area? it's literally just a place that has several spawns all over the place which change daily

Well once you break it down there's honestly not that many Pokemon in each Wild Area location. Even with the weather changing it's only like a handful of Pokemon that get switched around in each area and many share Pokemon.

What I did was catch all the wild Pokemon that I had available (also remember you can't catch Pokemon if they're over a certain level further restricting what I could catch), did some Raids, and then just went on with the story. Didn't go back to the Wild Area until I had to where I repeated what I did above and then moved on. There was one time I did go back to the Wild Area in order to get the Sludge Bomb TR for my Toxtricity because Low Key doesn't learn Venoshock but other than that I didn't return to the Wild Area until post game to start filling my dex. EDIT: WAIT! I do remember going back to the Wild Area once I got the Water Bike to explore the places only accessible that way.

 

[Mewtwo Uranium]

Honestly Generation 7 is better than 6 regardless of the chat system removal in 7 because of new TB options such as Tapu Koko and Naganadel and I think Powersaves is more used for 6 than 7 so E-Floette isnt as commonly seen in 7 but there are more pros than cons.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

how did you know what new pokemon where in the grass without literally looking it up in Bulbapedia if you didn't spend some time running around in each route grass?

Besides looking them up (which Pika revealed they did as I was writing this, forcing me to rewrite), you can also flee from the encounters you don't want, or you can just not run around in the grass to begin with because you don't have a specific team in mind.

 

[Pikachu315111]

Besides looking them up (which Pika revealed they did as I was writing this, forcing me to rewrite), you can also flee from the encounters you don't want, or you can just not run around in the grass to begin with because you don't have a specific team in mind.

I did mention I caught the new Pokemon on the route so I think that's probably what made Rapti curious how I knew.

And if you think I was being disingenuous in doing that, look GF still insists on making some Pokemon have an encounter rate of 2 or 3. Did I tell you about the time I spent almost two hours at my cousins house trying to get a stupid Stonjourner to appear?

 

[Draggy347]

Really? really?
HOW?

I went thought most of S&S with 30 pokemon and at every single point in the game I was at risk of overleveling, I had to resort to running around with only one or two pokemon at a time just to prevent them from being at a higher level that the next Gym Leader!


What do you guys even do in these games?
do you like never even touch the grass and only know what you can encounter in the grass from Bulbapedia?
do you use like 1 of your "team" and have no idea what the rest of your pokemon even do and just watch them level up?
what do you guys even do in the wild area?


Sincerely, how are you playing thing these games, what are you letsplaying them and thus skipping like 90% of the games, are you guys poketubers? do I need to call the cops!!?

Well I can't speak for Sw/Sh because I haven't played them, but one game where overleveling was a very real issue that I have played is XY. And I can confidently say that if you go around beating up every trainer in your way you'll end up 6-0'ing the Champion. However, if you don't, overleveling won't be that big an issue even with Exp. Share on (I will admit that it does make overleveling infinitely easier tho)

Probs not unpopular but can they redo Colo and XD for the Switch or something. Could never find em for a reasonable price online befofe my Wii got stolen =/

Man I sure love rum and hardtack I generally miss spin-offs with an actual storyline. Nowadays all we have is Mystery Dungeon. Whatever happened to stuff like Pokemon Ranger, or even Conquest? I liked Pokemon Conquest, even if the gameplay style wasn't something that I was used to. As a matter of fact I think that's part of why I liked it, seeing how much the usual formula could vary. Game Freak need to have more fun with their IP

 

[Rapti]

What I did was catch all the wild Pokemon that I had available, did some Raids, and then just went on with the story. Didn't go back to the Wild Area until I had to where I repeated what I did above and then moved on.

:/
I don't know 315111, considering how lousy the stories in pokemon are in general and in S&S in particular, and how easy to complete they are, I don't think there's much left to these games if you give up what little exploration they have on top of that

 

[Pikachu315111]

:/
I don't know 315111, considering how lousy the stories in pokemon are in general and in S&S in particular, and how easy to complete they are, I don't think there's much left to these games if you give up what little exploration they have on top of that

You don't think I explored every nook and cranny the Wild Area had to offer? Trust my, I thoroughly explored the Wild Area. I know where most of the good item respawn spots are. I have a good idea where certain "special" overworld Pokemon appear. As I edited in, once I got the Water Bike I went back not only through the Wild Area but also past routes to explore any ounce of water area they would allow me to explore.

I explored all of it, caught all the Pokemon I could (aka to fill the dex), and did some Raid battles (including catching a Steelix that I believe was 35 which was like 10 levels above any Pokemon I had at the time, not to mention all the Exp. Candies I got which I didn't use cause those just could bust the game difficulty right in half). What else do you want from me?

 

[Siggu]

See I sincerely don't get this

how did you know what new pokemon where in the grass without literally looking it up in Bulbapedia if you didn't spend some time running around in each route grass?
what did you do in the Wild Area? it's literally just a place that has several spawns all over the place which change daily

Like, sure, you don't care about overleveling but for those that do I don't see how you could possibly not overlevel
for example, when I did the 4th gym I entered 2 levels lower than the gym leader, my Diggersby ended up higher level than Gengar just by doing the challenge, which meant that in order to not be overleveled for the next gym leader I literally could not bring him, nor any of the other pokemon I brought with him, to the next route
and this is not an isolated incident, if I had not limited myself to two or less pokemon each route about half my team would have evolved without me ever using them and that's saying nothing of exploring the wild area

Well, in my case, all but one of the wild Pokémon I wanted to catch appeared in the overworld, so I could completely ignore tall grass. The only exception was Applin. I ignored everything else.

And even if I didn't have the advantage of the overworld, I'd just run away from anything I didn't want to catch.

(And I'd like to mention my 16-Pokémon run was "every Galarian Pokémon I liked at first sight", except for Appletun as it required trading)

 

[Rapti]

You don't think I explored every nook and cranny the Wild Area had to offer? Trust my, I thoroughly explored the Wild Area. I know where most of the good item respawn spots are. I have a good idea where certain "special" overworld Pokemon appear. As I edited in, once I got the Water Bike I went back not only through the Wild Area but also past routes to explore any ounce of water area they would allow me to explore.

I explored all of it, caught all the Pokemon I could (aka to fill the dex), and did some Raid battles (including catching a Steelix that I believe was 35 which was like 10 levels above any Pokemon I had at the time, not to mention all the Exp. Candies I got which I didn't use cause those just could bust the game difficulty right in half). What else do you want from me?

No man, I'm just saying the way you play this games is not something I personally find that fulfilling,
like, you play this games however you want, but not actually exploring the grass seems like skipping a huge part of the game to me

 

[Pikachu315111]

No man, I'm just saying the way you play this games is not something I personally find that fulfilling

What way? Checking Serebii just to know what Pokemon I have available to catch because I don't want to waste time with GF's Tauros mulch encounter rate table? Moving onto the next area after exhausting every option I have in a location (you better believe I follow RPG rule #1: talk with every NPC... followed by RPG rule #2: take anything that isn't too heavy or nailed down)? I don't buzz through the story I read every word of it plus talk with characters after the cutscene to see what additional text they have (now whether after playing I remember what they exactly say is another story, especially for a story that doesn't quite catch me or is rushing through things). I also talk with trainers after I battle them to see what else they have to say.

Personally I think I play in a way that's more meticulous than most players. You're acting as if I just try skip ahead through the main game as fast as possible, and while there are other players who do that (and that's fine, everyone can play their one way. If you wanted to grind a party of 30 Pokemon than more power to you, I'm not criticizing), I don't. The exact opposite. I spent over a week to finish Sword & Shield's main story cause of exploration, I'm pretty sure someone blasting through it can finish it within a day.

 

[Celever]

This conversation seems somewhat heated, so I'll just talk about my own experiences with the compulsory Exp. All.

From my experience, SwSh forces you to choose between dex completion and battling trainers. On my playthrough I began by doing both, but once my starter was becoming drastically overlevelled despite not having actually been used for most of the game, sitting at the bottom of my party while other team members caught up, I dropped the dex completion and just fought trainers, since that was my preference. Despite this running away from all wild battles and only battling trainers for around half the game, my team was still overlevelled against Leon, and that was after I got tired of my Thwackey being overlevelled and boxed it in favour of a lower levelled Flapple, which once again became overlevelled somehow.

The compulsory Exp. All has some serious failings:

• Catching Pokémon should not output experience.
• Exp. Groups don't work with the feature. The player is forced to use Pokémon who require more experience to level up far more than Pokémon in lower exp. groups. Particularly notably, the starter is in the lowest exp. group rendering it inherently broken if kept in the party over the course of the game.
• The level curve cannot aim to be on par with the player's Pokémon with the Exp. All, it has to aim to be above it. This makes the experience boost caused by level difference greater, and helps keep Pokémon around the same level.
• Let players turn the damn thing off.

If the compulsory Exp. All wasn't such a dumb feature, these arguments about the "best way to play the game" wouldn't surface so often. The Exp. All makes players choose between skipping game content to keep battles interesting, or experience the game in full (e.g. dex completion in the maingame) with stale battles. Both of those options are awful.

As for "how" I play the games... however the hell I feel like it. There's no right way to play the game. When I was a kid playing Pokémon Red I only used my Blastoise and a Dugtrio, and that was a fine way to play the game. I do a lot of nuzlockes where you have to know the game inside out, or sometimes I just plan out a team of favourites I haven't used before and play through the game normally. Sometimes I aim for dex completion and sometimes I just fight all the trainers. All of these playstyles are as valid as each other.

 

[Rapti]

Personally I think I play in a way that's more meticulous than most players. You're acting as if I just try skip ahead through the main game as fast as possible, and while there are other players who do that (and that's fine, everyone can play their one way. If you wanted to grind a party of 30 Pokemon than more power to you, I'm not criticizing), I don't. The exact opposite. I spent over a week to finish Sword & Shield's main story cause of exploration, I'm pretty sure someone blasting through it can finish it within a day.

I wasn't trying to say that you're skipping ahead

I was asking people if they just ignored exploring the grass and figuring route encounters by themselves because that's a huge part of the exploration to me

I was asking if people just ignored the grass
apparently the do

I find that bizarre since that's been part of the appeal of Pokemon games to me ever since I started playing Red, that's pretty much all there's to it

 

[Scorpio]

Well I can't speak for Sw/Sh because I haven't played them, but one game where overleveling was a very real issue that I have played is XY. And I can confidently say that if you go around beating up every trainer in your way you'll end up 6-0'ing the Champion. However, if you don't, overleveling won't be that big an issue even with Exp. Share on (I will admit that it does make overleveling infinitely easier tho)

Gonna pop in with something here concerning XY: when I played through Y I had Exp. Share off for most of the game before turning it on for Victory Road; from that one area alone my full team of 6 gained about ten levels each. IDK if any other parts of the game give such a massive boost with Exp. Share, for obvious reasons, but this kinda goes to show just how ridiculous it can get.

 

[Yung Dramps]

I think the most bizarre thing about the Exp. All to me is how nobody can come to a consensus on its functionality. I swear I have seen every single last opinion from "the thing worked fine and kept me at the right level even with 6 mons or less and tons of battles" to "I'm skipping literally every non-mandatory encounter I can and am still over-leveled". At this point I don't trust anyone's judgment except my own, which is that it works completely fine even with lots of NPC fights, some actively sought after under my belt.

 

[DrumstickGaming]

Colosseum was BRUTAL. I just played that game, and maybe I missed something, but I found it brutal compared to any other games and I do believe it is the hardest Pokemon game I've played (perhaps even more than, dare I say it... Pokemon R a n g e r). I finished the game with a team of Legendary Beasts + Flygon, Quagsire and Espeon, which considering the choices wasn't too bad a team. The main thing tho, was the levels. It never crossed through my head to spend a few hours grinding because idk why, so I came facing these level 60 final battles with level 47-49 Pokemon. Having to catch one Pokemon in each final battle, even with the Master Ball glitch, doesn't help. Explains why I got wiped out a total of 5 times between the two of them. I'm terrified of how XD will be like...

Agreed. I’m playing Colosseum right now, I’m at the Shadow Pokémon Lab with a team of Hariyama/Croconaw/Furret/Altaria and I’m trying to not rip my hair out. I’ve lost to Miror B once and almost once to Skrub, and have had to reset several times for snags. That Under staircase oh my gosh. The Piloswine and Sneasel took three resets EACH to catch (worse than the bosses!)

XD is nothing to be afraid of though. You have some tough fights (most notably, a boss with a Quagsire and a Lanturn midgame, and that Commander with a Shadow Mawile) but really, it’s A LOT easier than Colosseum with a level curve that isn’t HEY LET’S JUMP FIVE LEVELS FOR EVERY BOSS stupid like in Colosseum. The final boss of XD...is much easier than Colosseum’s. Far from a cakewalk, but compared to Evice XD’s final boss is a pansy (I consider Evice the hardest final boss in any Pokémon game).

 

[Ironmage]

I can't speak for XD, but it's pretty obvious that Colloseum is designed to be much harder than your average mainline game:

• Selection of available pokemon is much smaller, and second attempts at catching can be painful to get ahold of. (ironically, the final guantlet is one of the least painful if you fail to catch since they won't leave)
• All-doubles means every trainer must have at least 2 pokemon, compared to many in the pure mainline only having one.
  • It also makes relying on potions harder, due to the possibility of being double-targeted in every fight
• It can take a while before you can level up or change movesets to most mons you obtain.
  • One of said locked-in moves is always a recoil move that can cause you to lose your turn instead of attacking.
• Related, every mon you can catch knows a recoil move
• The AI generally has a pretty good idea what it's doing. Heck, even the meme boss knows that rain is a very good idea if you are bringing Ludicolo.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

The compulsory Exp. All has some serious failings:

• Catching Pokémon should not output experience.
• Exp. Groups don't work with the feature. The player is forced to use Pokémon who require more experience to level up far more than Pokémon in lower exp. groups. Particularly notably, the starter is in the lowest exp. group rendering it inherently broken if kept in the party over the course of the game.
• The level curve cannot aim to be on par with the player's Pokémon with the Exp. All, it has to aim to be above it. This makes the experience boost caused by level difference greater, and helps keep Pokémon around the same level.
• Let players turn the damn thing off.

Finally, someone who gets it.

Exp. Groups shatter the Exp. All by themselves and are, were and always will be a hilariously bad mechanic.

Also yeah, catching mons giving experience seems nice and makes sense since you do battle them for it, but in practice, it just helps you get way more experience than you need, especially if you look up the stats of your new mon and they have a trash nature or the stats just ain't that impressive despite the mons looking cool initially. (This happens in every game, shoutouts to GSC Unown.)

Exp. All being forced is also a horrible, horrible choice that directly goes against GF's own philosophy of "make your own difficulty.".

I was asking people if they just ignored exploring the grass and figuring route encounters by themselves because that's a huge part of the exploration to me

I was asking if people just ignored the grass
apparently the do

Regarding SnS's level curve, I'm basing it on like, 4 or 5 different runs I've watched with varying playstyles.

As for my own style, I agree with PikaNumbers. I just don't have the time to just run around like a fool checking every possible grass encounter, especially since I know that's not reliable because GF loves to sprinkle some sub-5% chance mons around.

I do make sure to talk to every NPC, "collect" everything that ain't bolted down and more importantly, battle every single trainer in the game. Also, I usually roll with parties of 6 at least.

Between having to do a 12-mon rotation in USUM with absolutely no wild battles just to keep even with the major battles (With Exp. All on) and the habit of planning everything about my teams in advance because of Fire Emblem, I don't fool around in the grass too much anymore. Not that's anything wrong with doing it, I just... lost the habit, y'know?

Edit: Oh yeah, regarding the Orre games, they're pretty tough. Especially since when I played Colosseum I was young, didn't like doubles and definitely wasn't used to them. They're a ton of fun though. I've grown to appreciate doubles a lot more because of these games.

 

[CPU]

Starters aren't in the lowest exp bracket

They're actually in the 4th highest (at least to get to level 100)! As has been mentioned before, though, level-to-level even lower Exp groups may take more to grow a level than their overall slower counterparts.

If you must know, the numbers are:

Erratic, or 600,000 (very few Pokémon have this group; it's mostly gen 3 with a few gen 4 Pokes and the Applin line)
Fast, or 800,000
Medium, or 1,000,000
Medium Slow, or 1,059,860 (the group Starters belong to; according to Bulbapedia, they grow the fastest of any Exp group at low levels, especially up to level 25)
Slow, or 1,250,000
Fluctuating, or 1,640,000 (Introduced in Gen 3 alongside the Erratic group, Game Freak must have decided it was a bad idea because the only line added after Gen 3 that has it is the Drifloon line)

I highly recommend reading the Bulbapedia page on Exp Groups, Volt-Ikazuchi.

Anyway, I agree that the varying Exp groups make the forced Exp Share more annoying than it needs to be.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

Starters aren't in the lowest exp bracket

When did I ever say that? lmao.

I said that *early-game* Fennekin needed half the exp. points to level up compared to Scatterbug.
(Who needs less exp to get to lv. 100, sure, but needs more exp per level during the deadweight bug phase. Great design GF.)

In case I somehow wasn't clear, let this picture do the talking.

See how ridiculous it is? (Yes, I hacked in some Rare Candies to level up that bug and even out the experience, whatever. Both are at Lv. 7. Didn't include that because the image would get too big.)

I need over twice the experience to level up a pathetic insect of a mon that ideally will have a -Atk nature with Tackle than the starter that can actually pull its weight without too much effort.

This is straight up dumb game design. And the lovely irony is that Scatterbug is in the Medium-Fast Exp. Group while Fennekin is in the Medium-Slow one.