Challenge Idea for a Catch 'Em All Youtube Series

Because my Mystery Dungeon series apparently isn't proof enough of my insanity, as well as all those other ridiculous video game projects I've done over the years, I am beginning to seriously consider a Youtube series (possibly involving streams if there's enough interest) showcasing me completing a living dex in one game in every set in the main series (e.g. one of RSE and one of FRLG even though they're in the same gen). This is still kind of a thought-in-progress sort of thing and almost definitely a project for after I have more money (so I can purchase the needed recording and playing equipment) and have gotten through my backlog of other projects, which includes the aforementioned Mystery Dungeon series. Regardless, it's on my mind, so I wanted to post about it here for a few reasons:

1) Who would be interested in watching such a series?
2) In order to spice it up so it's not just a thousand videos of me catching things in successive games I'd want to spice it up a little with gimmicks or challenge conditions, and I am open to suggestions on that.
3) I'm also open to additional rule suggestions or changes.

My current plans are as follows:

I will complete a living dex in one game from each of the following sets: RBY, GSC, RSE, FRLG, DPPt, HGSS, BW, BW2, XY, ORAS, SuMo, USUM. Additionally, I will need access to Colosseum and XD in order to get Ho-oh and Lugia in the gen 3 games, so I will also show off "completing" those games (which I haven't ever finished before this for the record). Event legends aren't going to be used unless there's a glitch that allows me to obtain the event legend, in which case I have to figure out how to make that work and get the event that way. (By blanket-excluding event legends I'm removing the potential headache nightmare that might come from trying to find a clean copy of Ranger to get Manaphy from or the Colosseum bonus disc or all of that nonsense. I'm only mostly insane.)

In each set of games, I'll pick one to use as my Pokédex-game. The one I choose to use as the Pokédex-game can only be started once, and that first file will be the file I complete with the Pokédex. Things like getting mutually exclusive mons (starters, fossils, etc) will have to come from another game in the set.

In the Pokédex-file, I am going to make a point to complete as much of the Pokédex as possible within that file alone before trading from another game. So for example if my Pokédex file in GSC era is Gold, I must get Suicune in Gold rather than trading it from Crystal even though doing that would be a hell of a lot easier. This is partially because it's my historical method of Pokédex completion but also partially because it is probably more interesting to watch me catching things in RSE and FRLG separately than completing the dex in RSE and then trading it all to FRLG. :p

With cross-compatible sets of games (e.g. RBY/GSC or DPPt/HGSS or USUM with literally every single other game) I have a little bit of a method to the hierarchy I plan to use for trade among these games as well:
RBY's Pokédex must be completing using solely RBY. This means I don't have access to breeding and must manually acquire Eevee and its evolutions as well as each form of the starters.
GSC's Pokédex must be completed as much as possible with GSC. Only when I can't get a mon (Kanto starters/legends/fossils) in GSC proper will I resort to trading it up from RBY.
In gen 3, my hierarchy mostly goes as follows: for RSE it is RSE > Colo/XD > FRLG, in other words very roughly in order of release date. (I'm still working this out due to the overlap between Colo/XD and FRLG and the additional headache caused by the Pokémon added for Emerald. Ideas on this are appreciated.) For FRLG it is FRLG > RSE > Colo/XD.
In gen 4 onwards, my hierarchy prioritizes games of that generation before possible transfers. In completing SuMo for instance the order is SuMo>USUM>any transfers (probably ordered in RBY/GSC > gen 6 > gen 5 > gen 4 > gen 3).

My other big rule for this, which I may or may not relax on at some points (it's a soft rule at the moment), is to prioritize as well the means by I receive Pokémon. Roughly it is a Wild > Gift > In-game Trade > Evolve/Breed organization, which means that if a Pokémon is available in the wild I must catch it in the wild, even if it can be obtained by evolving another mon. The reason this is a soft rule is because while I think it's more interesting than evolving a million thing, we all know there exist nightmares like SOS battle Salamence and fishing in rippling water for Dragonite in BW(2?) and things like that and I don't yet know if I'm willing to commit lol. So yeah feel free to offer opinions on that lol

I was also thinking about making each Pokédex-file playthrough have a different gimmick, like one file is a Nuzlocke and another is a monotype and stuff like that. So I'm also looking for ideas on the potential gimmicks or challenges to use in this.

Also. I'm not even sure if I'm going to do this lol and it's insane as hell so also feel free to dissuade me from it :B
 
I'd drop the gimmicks, anyone actually interested in watching such a series most likely be interested in how easy/hard is to catch all pokemon in a given generation, adding gimmicks just muddles the concept
 
My main reason for wanting to incorporate the gimmicks is because I figured catching Pokémon as the basic conceit of the series would get very old very quickly lol. But if you think otherwise, I'll definitely have to consider which outcome would be better for the series.
 

Merritt

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If you want to try something that's more engaging than just tossing a million Ultra Balls at everything until they're caught, why not try taking a variant page out of Zowayix's book and make it so that you get every Pokemon to their maximum chance to be caught before tossing balls?

For example, Abra has roughly a 62% chance to be caught at full HP in an ultra ball in gen 3. Since Abra just teleports turn 1, most people just chuck the ball on turn 1 and pray, but you can get the chance up to 100% by using a trapping move and getting it to 50% HP or lower.

You'd probably want to ignore this for the Safari Zone because getting Chansey's catch chance to the maximum possible without it fleeing in FRLG for example sounds absurdly painful and maybe some of the self healing Legendaries, but I have to say it's pretty cool to be able to know that the ball will 100% catch the Pokemon. It's definitely more planning necessary on your end though.
 
If you want to try something that's more engaging than just tossing a million Ultra Balls at everything until they're caught, why not try taking a variant page out of Zowayix's book and make it so that you get every Pokemon to their maximum chance to be caught before tossing balls?

For example, Abra has roughly a 62% chance to be caught at full HP in an ultra ball in gen 3. Since Abra just teleports turn 1, most people just chuck the ball on turn 1 and pray, but you can get the chance up to 100% by using a trapping move and getting it to 50% HP or lower.

You'd probably want to ignore this for the Safari Zone because getting Chansey's catch chance to the maximum possible without it fleeing in FRLG for example sounds absurdly painful and maybe some of the self healing Legendaries, but I have to say it's pretty cool to be able to know that the ball will 100% catch the Pokemon. It's definitely more planning necessary on your end though.
I really like this idea in general; it seems like a great way to actually make the runs into something catch-focused and not battle-focused as the gimmicks I was proposing would be. In fact, it would actually end up changing my team inherently because in order to pull this off the way you suggested, then I'd need to have a regular team member with a trapping move and something with False Swipe and something with a status move(s), etc, which makes my team less battle-focused and therefore changes the entire focus of the run. I really like that!

I'd probably end up tweaking it some though because if done the way you suggested, then in like gen 4 that would result in me lobbing Dusk Balls/Timer Balls to the exclusion of all other types of Poké Ball, which again kind of runs into the issue of what counts as "engaging". I might try to spice it up by introducing some other mechanics like "all Bug or Water types must be caught in Net Balls" or "all Moon Stone-evolving Pokémon must be caught in Moon Balls" (even though it actually doesn't change their capture rate at all in gen 2 due to a coding error) or "I must catch each Pokémon as soon as I can encounter it, meaning if it's before I can access Great Balls then so be it" or something like that, just to vary the mechanics a little and give it some variety as far as types of Poké Balls and catch attempts are concerned.

(I'd have to break your version of the rule as written anyway if I ever wanted to win the Bug-Catching Contest and get a Sun Stone, since you get more points for catching a healthy Pokémon than a weak one :p)
 
If you want to try something that's more engaging than just tossing a million Ultra Balls at everything until they're caught, why not try taking a variant page out of Zowayix's book and make it so that you get every Pokemon to their maximum chance to be caught before tossing balls?

For example, Abra has roughly a 62% chance to be caught at full HP in an ultra ball in gen 3. Since Abra just teleports turn 1, most people just chuck the ball on turn 1 and pray, but you can get the chance up to 100% by using a trapping move and getting it to 50% HP or lower.

You'd probably want to ignore this for the Safari Zone because getting Chansey's catch chance to the maximum possible without it fleeing in FRLG for example sounds absurdly painful and maybe some of the self healing Legendaries, but I have to say it's pretty cool to be able to know that the ball will 100% catch the Pokemon. It's definitely more planning necessary on your end though.
I really like this idea, it would be a "Pokémon highest percent catch rate" run which sound not only interesting and informative but also unique
that'd definitely stand out among the thousands of youtube playthroughs
 

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