Ah, am not familiar with english names of cities. Does the AI really behave like this outside of the very first battle???
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The Best and Worst Boss Fights in Pokemon
- Thread starter Yung Dramps
- Start date
I mean that still doesn't excuse the fact that the rival's Greninja only has Quick Attack and Water Shuriken. At least give it Dark Pulse for that fight. Plus the standard "advanced" AI set used for important NPCs already knows how to go for optimal damage and would be exploitable regardless of what you code.
Besides, a four damaging moves Greninja would actually be kind of threatening even if it isn't the best coverage.
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The AI is devolving to mush with each generation to the point that the AI can't even switch on its own, and status moves legit break it. I've seen mons spam Life Dew at full health on Championship level AI.
The solution is obviously not making them even more exploitable by denying them coverage moves. What they should do is look at older games, specifically Stadium 2, understand what worked, and make difficulty levels that actually affect the AI.
BW2's Challenge mode was a step in the right direction, but it clearly wasn't enough. (LMAO @ unlocking the Easy mode after beating Normal.)
A franchise with such a broad fanbase needs to have more options to accommodate them.
For example, we know damn well Lil Timmy ain't the target audience for VGC, especially with how bad they market it. So all those QoL things added for it are intended for a different audience. One that doesn't need Hop to talk about type effectiveness in every single battle in SwSh.
Adding coverage moves is not only important, it's the bare minimum to not have every battle end up like Nemona 2 (The Tera introduction) where you can get a Paldean Wooper, and she LITERALLY can't hit you because they didn't even give her Pawmi Tackle.
Since GSC, IIRC, assuming they don't have status moves, the highest damage option is always picked.
So, using your example, Disarming Voice wouldn't be used unless somehow it was a better option than STAB Boomburst. Basically, that would involve either DV hitting super-effectively while Burst is quad-resisted or a Ghost-type.
Which is a better option than getting 100% walled by a Ghost.
Also, somewhat surprisingly, the AI is still quite adept at using pivoting moves like U-Turn to switch out if it's in a bad situation, even if it's not the most damaging move available.
That's an abomination
i find coverage moves tend to be just as easy to exploit as not having them. "force a pokemon to use some ass coverage move/spam stupid status to get a free switch that can easily win you the game" is one of the easier tactics to learn in these games and you can use it soooo often.
I feel like giving the player the option to bait the AI is infinitely better than making said AI completely inept by providing nothing to work with.
One involves actual input from the player and the other. Doesn't.
I feel like quite a few bosses across the franchise could be made harder by just removing some pointless or bad moves. One of the examples is B/W Skyla, who almost always simply refuses to be threatening because she is busy wasting time on using moves like amnesia, razor wind or aqua ring. Removing these moves from her Pokemon would probably make her a little harder to beat. So honestly, Pokemon not having complete movesets isn't necessarily a bad thing imo, if doing that means that the Pokemon uses higher quality moves more often.
Actually, I would like it if bosses had Pokemon with incomplete movesets if it had any kind of intentionality behind it. Imagine a gym leader leading with a sturdy Onix with just stealth rocks and explosion, or a Ledian with reflect, light screen and then u-turn as its only attacking move. What about a Pokemon with just fake out and last resort? Intentional design like this could really spice up the challenge and creativity of boss teams. It's especially important for lead Pokemon, because if a bosses lead has useless, exploitable moves, any half-decent setup mon can probably just completely trivialise that entire fight. That's how you get situations like Raticate and Farfetch'd being able to sweep the fighting type E4 member in HGSS.
Actually, I would like it if bosses had Pokemon with incomplete movesets if it had any kind of intentionality behind it. Imagine a gym leader leading with a sturdy Onix with just stealth rocks and explosion, or a Ledian with reflect, light screen and then u-turn as its only attacking move. What about a Pokemon with just fake out and last resort? Intentional design like this could really spice up the challenge and creativity of boss teams. It's especially important for lead Pokemon, because if a bosses lead has useless, exploitable moves, any half-decent setup mon can probably just completely trivialise that entire fight. That's how you get situations like Raticate and Farfetch'd being able to sweep the fighting type E4 member in HGSS.
Shoutout to Bea, who uses a lead Hitmontop that is literally unable to touch Ghost-types and is located immediately after a route that happens to be frequented by a Ghost-type that is capable of learning the debilitating TM you just got from the previous Gym. They apparently did not learn from Korrina.
Cool, spin offs too. Well, Darkrai in explorers of sky/etc is pretty bad, as it has ominous wind and you are stuck with cresselia. That can just ruin you if RNG picks the move, hits, AND boosts speed. Every other boss fight in the game seems fine, maybe even one of the best ones. Like W/ Shaymin it's tough but you have team frontier and stuff, seemed more balanced.
I don't get why Switching is where GF has decided to draw the line for AI. Because I doubt it's a programming issue, and IIRC Stadium trainers would switch just fine back in the day. And the NPCs use U-Turn etc just fine. Why is "I have Gyarados in vs Raichu and Gastrodon in the back, Click Dragon Dance" the way GF wants NPC fights to work?
I'm not sure on how many of the more recent games it's implemented for major trainers, but the bottleneck for the AI hard switching is it not wanting to have foreknowledge of the player's moves. If they read a valid switch-in on your previous move (a resist that can also threaten SE damage), the AI has been capable of switching since at least Emerald. The obvious limitation is this doesn't do anything if the player OHKOs.
While I accept that it probably wasn't when the system was being produced, "everything has STAB" is a pretty safe assumption nowadays, and could do to be worked into the switching algorithm.
In all fairness to the rematch fight, for its time, it was one of the most stacked postgame rival teams. A full team of 6 Pokémon with the highest being at 70 was already beyond almost every rival from the first 5 gens.
I don't think this is a good point. For one, leveling gets less impactful over time.
A Level 60 mon vs a Level 70 mon is only the mon being 6/7th as strong level wise, while even at the Elite 40, Level 50 vs 60 and 5/6th. And that ofc goes on over time.
But also Diantha is Level 65. So like, they know the player is probably over Level 60 with the Exp. Share. People that took their time with the game were sometimes Level 70+ lol
Your point is even more correct because Diantha's ace is Level 68. Overall, her team's average level is 65.5 while Calem/Serena's is 67.5, so it's a 2-level difference either way.
After factoring in the rival movesets and the fact that you already know all their Pokemon besides Clefable from previous battles, I think it's clear that this was either a very poor attempt at a climactic final rival battle or it was never intended to be a genuine challenge to begin with.
The Best
BBL Champion Kieran
SEMI-COMPETITIVE STRATEGIES AND TEAM COMPOSITION. Need I say more?
Champion Leon
I usually criticize BS Level jumps in the Pokémon games but this gets a pass because of how fun it is. The theme, the atmosphere, the team, honestly hit really hard for 12 year old me.
The Worst
Gyms 5-8 (Yellow)
Who TF thought making Koga and Sabrina's team in the mid 40s-early 50s was okay?! That just means I have to grind ALOT, which is a huge slog in Gen 1.
The Elite 4 (BDSP)
Steep difficulty AND Level Spike? Yeah fuck that. Grinding is Cringe.
BBL Champion Kieran
SEMI-COMPETITIVE STRATEGIES AND TEAM COMPOSITION. Need I say more?
Champion Leon
I usually criticize BS Level jumps in the Pokémon games but this gets a pass because of how fun it is. The theme, the atmosphere, the team, honestly hit really hard for 12 year old me.
The Worst
Gyms 5-8 (Yellow)
Who TF thought making Koga and Sabrina's team in the mid 40s-early 50s was okay?! That just means I have to grind ALOT, which is a huge slog in Gen 1.
The Elite 4 (BDSP)
Steep difficulty AND Level Spike? Yeah fuck that. Grinding is Cringe.
Do you though?
I mean it is stupid, but combined with the enemy AI movesets, and the fact by gyms 5-8 your pokemon are loaded with stat exp by that point, the 10 level difference hardly matters lol. I walled Koga with a level 35 dugtrio in RB. He only has poison moves.
Not just the stat XP, but the badge boosts in Gens 1-3 do a lot to compensate for the level differences. I wouldn't go so far as to say that the levels of enemy trainers from Gens 1-3 are just vibes, given that level actually plays into the damage formula, but it doesn't really matter that much. I think a lot of the complaints about needing to grind from Gens 1-3 are essentially self-inflicted - these games are designed around you being underleveled, and grinding in an attempt to maintain parity actually gives you a significant advantage in practice. This is exacerbated in Gen 1 by the barely-functional trainer AI, but it applies to Gens 2 and 3 as well.
This is a tangent, but this is a big problem that HGSS has; they kept the level curve but without the badge boosts that made up for the difference. Suddenly, those Level 50 Dragonites go from a reasonable challenge to being juggernauts of raw stats, which is a lot less manageable!
In transitioning from GSC to HGSS they also added two levels to everything on Lance's team other than his level 50 Dragonite...while they kept the levels static for every other Johto Elite Four member.
It's just amazing to me that they looked at that fight and thought to themselves that was a missing piece. It's one of the worst designed boss fights in the series in my opinion.
BEST: I think the Miror B boss battle in Pokémon Colosseum is so much fun .
WORST: Clair in GSC. She's a sore loser.
WORST: Clair in GSC. She's a sore loser.
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tbh GSC Clair is one of the few Gen 2 Gym Leaders not named Whitney that actually poses any sort of threat. Even though she's camped right outside of Ice Path, you don't get a free ride by bringing an Ice-type since your options are super slim (realistically the frail Jynx, the kind of underwhelming Dewgong, or the annoying-to-obtain Union Cave Lapras) and Kingdra isn't even weak to Ice anyway. And if you try to be clever by bringing a Water-type with an Ice move you'll have to contend with the one Dragonair with Thunderbolt, potentially having to rely on Icy Wind as the move of choice, and still no efficient way to deal with Kingdra. Plus all the hax between Paralysis spam (Dragon Breath on everything and Thunder Wave on all 3 Dragonair) and Kingdra's Smokescreen. If you don't land quick KOs the chances of getting screwed by RNG will keep rising.
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All that AND you have to solve the boulder puzzle before you can battle her. And then, when you finally beat her, she's like: ''I'm not giving you anything. Sucks to be you, I guess.''
GSC's difficulty lies more in Leaders trying to jank you than beating you, I agree.
With that said, the ones that do make an effort are interesting. Whitney, Clair, and Will are pretty good at no-nonsense offense despite having some tricks up their sleeve.