Pokémon Black 2 and White 2 (DS, June in JP, Fall in EU/NA/AU) - Updated May 12th

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Mario With Lasers

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Besides, all entry hazards work differently. You're kidding yourselves if you think they'll do a Stealth Icicle or Burn Spikes. If anything, we'll have a recovery hazard (huh).
 

erisia

Innovative new design!
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If anything, we'll have a recovery hazard (huh).
Jokes aside, that'd be really cool. Call it "Healing Circle", make it Psychic type, and let it heal everything other than Dark types for 12.5% when switching in. Non-stackable. If only specific Pokemon like Celebi, Gardevoir etc got the move, it'd be a pretty interesting addition.
 

lmitchell0012

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I don't know why everyone hates entry hazards so much. Entry hazards are an absolute NECESSITY because if we didn't have them people could just have focus sash on everything. And unless I'm mistaken item clause isn't included in standard rules.

I had one more crazy idea. You know how being burned lowers your pokemon's attack?? What if there was a new status condition that lowered special attack instead??
 
Keep in mind that GameFreak aren't designing their games for us. They do it to satisfy their target group. .
To an extent, true. But to an extent, they also aren't ignoring 'us' either. I don't think that the wee ones care about IV/EV (or stat reducing berries) or on their first run through said "Man i wish they had an item that would let my earthquake weak pokemon float". If anything, super powerful subway pokemon and items which make a basic strategy null (air balloon/move weakening berries) would make the game more aggravating for the casual player.

I'm not saying they are going to go crazy and eliminate stealth rocks or add in new hazards (or blockers) in BW2. But I do believe they are concerned of the competitive scene (see: VGC) and take small steps every generation to add new twists or balance for the more battle savvy
 
I don't know why everyone hates entry hazards so much. Entry hazards are an absolute NECESSITY because if we didn't have them people could just have focus sash on everything. And unless I'm mistaken item clause isn't included in standard rules.

I had one more crazy idea. You know how being burned lowers your pokemon's attack?? What if there was a new status condition that lowered special attack instead??
Poison should do that, clearly


And then no one ever used a special attacker ever again
 
I had one more crazy idea. You know how being burned lowers your pokemon's attack?? What if there was a new status condition that lowered special attack instead??
And a confusion that hits off of SpA. And toxic rain. and fire rain. And you know what? We're not getting anything like that at all in G5, so don't talk about it here.

And Item clause is included in standard rules. And there are enough Sturdy users that everyone can be protected from OHKOs. Oh nos.

Also keep in mind that GameFreak don't make the games with competitive gameplay in mind. They're doing it for fun and profit (rather, the latter as caused by the former). They take some measures to prevent over-centralization or total brokenness, but in general, those are tertiary concerns.
More pokemon tourneys would suggest otherwise.
However, as evident by Smogon's tiering system, they have done some blunders. I think Moody is the biggest one. It ended out more powerful than intended, I think. The Pokémon having it all end up invincible just by staying in.
GF gave us red card and phasing moves. And moves that bypass protect and "always hit" - the tools to deal w/ Moody are in the game as is.

Smogon doesn't like effects that increase evasiveness. I sort of agree. Smogon doesn't like sleep effects, hence sleep clause. I sort of agree.

The question is whether these effects really make the metagame unstable. I don't think so. It'd just play a whole lot different. Banning "troublesome" moves is a fine choice by Smogon, and GF adjusting their availability (like Stealthrock) in the next generation, and giving new boosts in the 2nd game of G5 is also good.

Then again, they could just introduce more "bans" like they did w/ Sky Drop. I knew Sky Drop was something special. :) If GF wants to "ban" Skydrop and Moody and the like in tourney play - that's fine by me. Just put it on a board I can read, don't have the darned lady tell me everything that's banned because I have 2 life orbs accidentally on my team.


Not far behind trails Stealth Rock. The idea was brilliant, but the execution... oh my. Stealth Rock ended up punishing only some Pokémon, shutting them out from even friendly multiplayer (the sort of metagame GameFreak cares the most about) usage, while totally ignoring others. It might be a balancing force in the metagame, we regard it as something that keeps Volcarona and Dragonite in check, but generally it screws over some Pokémon far too badly. Most notably the likes of Charizard or Yanmega. To put Stealth Rock bluntly, "it's not fair!".
Rapid Spin > Stealth Rock.

That said, GF did reduce access to stealth rock this generatioin for exactly that reason. If it were a TM introduced in G5, I think it might get the Sky drop treatment.

Then again, I don't even think 6 vs 6 singles is possible anymore, and stealth rock is pretty bad in 3 vs 3 singles.
Keep in mind that GameFreak aren't designing their games for us.
They probably should be designing it for multiple targets.
So yeah, expect Acid Spray and Quick Guard tutors. Of course we'll see a few more powerful moves too, like Sludge Wave or Hurricane or something. It's the way it has always been. I'm excited anyway.
Sludge Wave is a TM.
 

Destiny Warrior

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GF's "competitive" focus is on doubles not singles(where Moody isn't very broken). So long as we stick to singles as our official metagame, we will keep finding things to be broken.
 

UltiMario

Out of Obscurity
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Then again, they could just introduce more "bans" like they did w/ Sky Drop. I knew Sky Drop was something special. :) If GF wants to "ban" Skydrop and Moody and the like in tourney play - that's fine by me. Just put it on a board I can read, don't have the darned lady tell me everything that's banned because I have 2 life orbs accidentally on my team.
Sky Drop is banned because it causes game-breaking glitches.
 
I'm not saying they are going to go crazy and eliminate stealth rocks or add in new hazards (or blockers) in BW2. But I do believe they are concerned of the competitive scene (see: VGC) and take small steps every generation to add new twists or balance for the more battle savvy
I sorta agree with this sentiment. However...

I understand that Game Freak focuses on Doubles as its main metagame, however if Game Freak truly did care about all faucets of the competitive scene, why would they design/implement Pokes such as Volcarona and Multiscale Dragonite that facilitates SR's usage? If they truly stood by that concept I don't think either of those Pokes would have happened. Ultimately I think we have to remember it wasn't Game Freak that made "the game" it was us; we refer to it as and it is a metagame. This leads me to believe Game Freak doesn't care about the 6 vs 6 aspect, really just its VGC game, albeit quite limitedly.
 

Destiny Warrior

also known as Darkwing_Duck
is a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus
This game isn't ours. We merely modify the existing metagame to suit our own needs. Evasiveness was banned by us, not by GF. This is because we mainly play singles. In Doubles and higher metagames, evasiveness isn't as broken because there is a greater chance that the user will be hit by an attack. Factor in the popularity of spread moves, and evasiveness, one of the first things we ban in singles, is actually not that broken in doubles.

OHKO moves again are not really such a big deal. It's a 30% chance of getting a KO, sure, but it's also a 70% chance of missing. People obsess over the KO aspect, but in GF's primary focus(doubles), the risk is so great the reward is often not merited.

GF's focus is obviously VGC, it's official metagame. Just because we, as Smogoners, often play singles, which GF does not worry about too much, does not mean GF is "uncompetitive". The game in the first place is made for casual players, and the competitive aspect is focused on doubles, which is why doubles is so much more diverse than singles.

When was the last time there was a Pokemon singles tournament(official)? I believe it was back in the days of GSC. From ADV onwards, starting with the JAA, all official tournaments have been doubles, a metagame where steadily there has been no single Pokemon that dominates the entire metagame, but only strategies. As long as we play singles, there is a great threat of a single Pokemon wiping out everything, because the aspect of predicting more than 1 Pokemon's actions is absent. Inherently, it makes singles less balanced.

Evidence of GF being competitive are Rotation battles. Those battles are full of prediction, and skill-based play.
 
Smogonites define 'competitive' as 'Smogon's metagame' then claim GF doesn't care about it. Well duh. They're not going to send us Pokemon/Item/Move concepts during development and have us run suspect tests then change things based on our feedback...lol But do they care that the game is balanced according to their internal criteria. Of course!

Sometimes they mess up (like making Psychic types godly in Gen I) and go on to make adjustments. But doing things that we consider 'broken' sure doesn't mean that they don't care about making the game 'competitive' according to their own aims.

Stealth Rock punishes some Pokemon hard but Volcarona and Multiscale Dragonite still function well in a SR infested metagame. Maybe if it weren't for SR we'd be calling those Pokemon broken!
 
Jokes aside, that'd be really cool. Call it "Healing Circle", make it Psychic type, and let it heal everything other than Dark types for 12.5% when switching in. Non-stackable. If only specific Pokemon like Celebi, Gardevoir etc got the move, it'd be a pretty interesting addition.
Or you could use Wish.
 
Right now,
I think the most reasonable setting for BW2 is
same hero, same region, same starters, same pokemon, same gyms,
same essentially everything up to E4,
but of course changes to the main parts of the story.
And the story being continued and finished after E4 throughout the east half of Unova!
Along with the obvious awesome upgrades to stuff like subway and whatnot.

If its BW but with 50% longer story, its enough for the "2" to make sense.
 
Right now,
I think the most reasonable setting for BW2 is
same hero, same region, same starters, same pokemon, same gyms,
same essentially everything up to E4,
but of course changes to the main parts of the story.
And the story being continued and finished after E4 throughout the east half of Unova!
Along with the obvious awesome upgrades to stuff like subway and whatnot.

If its BW but with 50% longer story, its enough for the "2" to make sense.
I agree with you on this. However, the thing i don't understand is why 2 games and not the expected "grey" version? This is the only thing that separates it from the others namely yellow till platinum. And of course, we would be expecting an upgrade from the battle subway (possibly since this happened in rse and dppt), some new characters in the storyline perhaps, and of course a lot of "side-quests" post e4 is also possible.
 

Destiny Warrior

also known as Darkwing_Duck
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It's 2 games because BW focused on truth and ideals, which can't really be reconciled into 1 plot effectively(and also to milk cash).
 

ElectivireRocks

Banned deucer.
Also keep in mind that GameFreak don't make the games with competitive gameplay in mind.
This is a very common misconception. They do, at least in the more recent games.
Gen 4 and 5 clearly show how GF have started to care more and more about the competitive scenario. Pokemon like Gliscor and Ferrothorn are solely designed with competitive usefulness in mind.
 
Seems they're no mentioning of the game possibly coming out around June 23rd. Didn't expect the release day to appear so soon.

Now we wait one to four days to see what Corocoro has in store for us. I wonder if Pokejungle rumors ended up being true, because the uproar it will cause will be hilarious.
 
GF's focus is obviously VGC, it's official metagame. Just because we, as Smogoners, often play singles, which GF does not worry about too much, does not mean GF is "uncompetitive". The game in the first place is made for casual players, and the competitive aspect is focused on doubles, which is why doubles is so much more diverse than singles.
What I don't understand is why do they not have divisions? I mean the whole foundation of Pokemon's gameplay has been singles given that every generation has played out singles battles more than others. You start the game playing singles, you play through most of the entire game playing singles, it only makes sense that competitive play is done in singles as it has been far more explored than doubles. If Game Freak wanted to make Doubles the new play-style, that should be reflected in the games. Why don't players start with 2 pokemon?
The fact that they make 4 different styles of play (Singles, Doubles, Triples, and Rotation) and don't have different divisions surprises me, especially when Singles is by far the most developed. I don't even care if they used Smogon Rules or not, the fact that they eliminate singles play as their competitive metagame, yet make the entire franchise's primary experience single battles makes absolutely no sense to me.
 

Destiny Warrior

also known as Darkwing_Duck
is a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus
Multiple divisions in tourneys splits the playerbase and would take too long to complete. Doubles is popular because all kinds of wacky strategies can work there(witness Articuno64 with Parasect in Seattle 2010), which is more entertaining to the casual gamer. Triples has the problem of complicating things too much for the average gamer, while Rotation is so skill oriented that if a)we weren't so locked into the concept of "singles can only be Smogon's official metagame" and b)it was on a simulator, it would be the ideal competitive metagame. Doubles is a happy balance of skill and easy play for new players. I'm not saying Joe78232984624982 will win a VGC, but he'll definitely have fun there with doubles.

Singles has the problem of being overly repetitive at a competitive level. Only a certain group of Pokemon are viable in the metagame(OU), and practically every other Pokemon gets destroyed at once, whereas in doubles, almost every Pokemon has some kind of niche somewhere.

Singles is their main experience ingame since that's how it's been for the previous generations. However, they have begun to include more doubles experience in the game, through dark grass which can provide wild double battles. They can't jump directly to doubles, since so many people would be utterly weirded out. It's a gradual process, which at the moment focuses on the VGCs. Somewhere down the lane, there is a chance they will change the formula of the game to be doubles-oriented, but till then, it'll be gradual.

Singles is the only metagame where stall is viable. Stall is extremely off-putting to the casual gamer(I know). It also stretches matches out forever. Our present singles metagame is a case in point. Games that last 50 turns are too long for a tournament. They have to do everything p.much in 1 day for regionals, and singles would ruin that.
 

Katakiri

Listen, Brendan...
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Game Freak builds their games with Doubles and Singles in mind. Doubles is the "official" way to play soley because of the VGCs. (Although MLG had a Pro Curcuit for Singles for DPP iirc and has an on-going 6v6 Singles Ladder for B/W.)

Saying that Game Freak only "balances" the game for Doubles is calling them blind. Game Freak knows EXACTLY why Diamond & Pearl revitalized the series. Wifi. They know it definitely wasn't Double Battles. And, as a budding game designer myself that knows the industry, I can tell you that, just like how we do with PO, they can extract data from their servers and look at it to go "Okay, what are the most popular things we're seeing here?" When they look at the unrated friend battles being 90% 6v6 Singles, then they know what to focus on.

The VGCs are not run by Game Freak. The VGCs are vastly just a PR stunt held by the marketing division that advertises Pokemon Merchandise and is also responsible for the Pokemon TCG tourneys to....advertise Pokemon more! What a shock!

If I have one gripe with gamers, it's that you don't give game developers enough credit. Smogon is small. PO is small. BUT Game Freak knows we exist all because of one thing, there is no big, competitive Pokemon site of Japan. If you search competitive Pokemon in Japanese, the first 2 results are Smogon with the 3rd being a question asking why competitive Pokemon is so popular in North America. Does Game Freak care about our rulesets or ban-lists? Hell no. Are they aware that there is a community 116,000 strong on a site vastly dedicated to 6v6 Single play? Absolutely. It's Game Freak's job to know the community. It's bad game design to not look for easily find-able sites like Smogon the specialize in YOUR game.

Game Freak knows their fan-base. They know how much we love 6v6 battles. But they also know that 6v6 ranked matches are a terrible idea. They know that not everyone has an hour to spare for stall, but they also know that players will try to stall the timer if they have the lead if they implemented a 30-minute timer into 6v6 battles. They chose 3v3 & 4v4 because they go fast. The term "snack gaming" gets thrown around a lot, but that's what it is; most people only play Pokemon for 10, 20, 30 minutes a day. 3v3 or 4v4 battle rarely last over 5 or 10 minutes. That why Game Freak chose them. No one wants to lose points on a ladder because they can't keep playing for another 40 minutes.

Game Freak balances the game for 6v6 singles and 4v4 doubles. The game was always about 6v6 singles since Red & Green. They started "balancing" the game with Gold & Silver because then knew that they have made a competitive game series now. The series was balanced for singles every game. Up until the VGCs started in 2009, there was no question about that. You don't take a game series with 5 generations of installments, all built for singles play and then turn it into a purely doubles-balanced game. It doesn't work that way. No matter how much VGC players wish otherwise, they will always be in the back seat in Game Freak's designing process.

tl;dr: Give Game Freak the credit they deserve.
 
from serebii-

"In addition to that, the Keldeo distribution in Japan starts on this day, with the promotion suggesting you should use it in your playthrough."

speculations on why they would want you to use keldeo? a focus on the musketeer trio perhaps, with some background lore on the unova region? maybe some link to keldeo and kyurem that is not yet obvious?

your ideas?
 
from serebii-

"In addition to that, the Keldeo distribution in Japan starts on this day, with the promotion suggesting you should use it in your playthrough."

speculations on why they would want you to use keldeo? a focus on the musketeer trio perhaps, with some background lore on the unova region? maybe some link to keldeo and kyurem that is not yet obvious?

your ideas?
Highly doubtful. At most it will be like how you can use most event pokemon to help play through a game. Victini can help get through Black and White, Event shiny dogs can help get through SoulSilver/HeartGold, and etc. I think they're just advertising the convenience of using a legendary pokemon during a walk-through of the game.
 
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