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I feel FOMO on events for sure. I wanted Pecharunt so bad (SmogFog + Parting Shot!!!), and I know there's a voucher thing in case I miss it, but I never see those happen, so if the event stalls until its too old to run, I assume the mon is gone for good.
Godly gift is a fun circuit for me, however, had I not participated I would not have felt FOMO. If Godly Gift comes up again I will have FOMO, but if I missed out the first time I wouldn't have cared. If anything there's FOMO when this game is active and popular.
I can comfortably say "Fuck it" to most things that crop up in this game. I have a small pool of pokemon I would move mountains for, but other than that, I can go without participating in things. Contests, for instance, I haven't looked at. I don't even know what stardust does.
Do people experience fomo about not playing in a given month's league circuit arena? About not playing in a given month's event? I never have and never considered that others might.
The intent with those is that there's variety from month to month, not that everyone is expected to do all of them. But if there is a large contingent of people who feel expected to do all of them, that is information that would be good for me to know.
I don't experience fomo as far as league circuit arenas or other limited time event arenas. What I do get serious fomo about is on events that reward legendary Pokemon or currency for legendary Pokemon. Case in point, I originally planned to sit the summer out due to irl commitments. However, the summer event is offering 30 stardust as a reward, which when combined with the Stella Magna Event is probably the best time for me to get to 50 and obtain a Diancie, a Pokemon that I have wanted in this game for a long time. The standard events getting silly prizes like Dragonite lv0 or other FE lv 0 Pokemon don't cause this effect, only the ones with otherwise unobtainable Pokemon.
I am a bit sad about "missing zapdos" where it is now vastly harder to get than before the boast rework (and I still do have plans to try and gain them).
Other than that no real fomo. Not as large a standard pokemon fan so I didn't come in with particular mon I really wanted, and the ones I do have fond memories for arnt' legendaries.
No fomo at all for missing specific arenas or battle rules, I definitely prefer them having variety to them always being the same so people won't miss anything.
Edit. Not having any way to get megas is sad. I want a mega kanga and gengar.
When I release these pinnacle fights from drafts, they're inevitably going to need numbers tuning. Would we rather I:
have some handpicked tester or testers jump queue to try it first
just let the fights rock with the public understanding that I will likely hotfix them within their release month or the month after
the fights, especially the raids, are as dense as they have to be in order to be challenging-but-beatable, and have some pretty specific team requirements. it may be some time before all of their seams are exposed by players
Testing is good in theory, but in practice it is likely to mean a few months per iteration and people are likely to john if helping test means fighting a full on raid except with no victory reward at the end.
Maybe the raid design could be put up a week before it is out (either public or to a group of testers) for them to theory craft and try to get some insight that way. Can people find strategies that seem to have success, do damage calcs say the boss is going to wipe out almost any raiding party in 4 rounds, what sort of build orders are people looking at for sieges.
Just releasing and seeing can work, though it has the potential to have raids that look hard enough no one is willing to try them or exploitable enough that muliple people grab a quick kyogre/groudon.
I think it's best to get this here now, to start preparing expectations.
This is a snippet from the upcoming September Major Update, in case anyone's forgotten about that.
Me said:
Combo Cleanup, Part 1
I've already waxed poetic about the health and history of BBP's (and ASB's) Combo system in prior patches. Pokemon have more possible Combos than ever before. Players have better tools for looking up Combos than ever before.
The result? Combinations, and the second-order haymaker moves used in them, have a choke-hold on how people play the game. Combos are used primarily to gain turn efficiency—to use powerful non-attacking moves without "wasting" a possible attack.
The first impact this has is that whenever second order has a Combo Token available, the player ordering first is fending off four actions. Because first order's Combos are easily countered by second order, this benefit is heavily skewed in second order's favor. This has severe knock-on effects on how players prioritize switching, whether players are willing to type trapping or pivoting moves, how willing players are to set easily-removed Screens or Hazards to teammates in reserve, and more.
This has been pretty seriously eroding game balance from top to bottom. The value of almost every game piece hinges on the value of switching and of turn efficiency, both of which Combos badly distort. Moves like Sheer Cold are even balanced primarily around being used in Combos.
Addressing this will take multiple passes, so we're going to make some changes in this patch, and more drastic changes on the turn of the next Season.
[ The implementation details are complete, but could change. They would normally go in a hide tag here. ]
Just so we're on the same page—it's harmful that second order is so much stronger than first order right now. The game works best when second order is slightly favored in a round.
If first order is stronger, then that means that substitutions restrict second order from enacting anything meaningful, and first order is belligerently enforcing whatever proactive gameplan they've chosen. If second order is as strong as it is now, then first order is essentially shooting in the dark to hopefully survive, and praying.
Combos aren't the only source of fault. Many of the most powerful second-order moves (think Disable, Pain Split, Bide, and so on) are too easy to use profitably, and popular Pokemon have many of these moves for first order to contend with. However, Combos are a huge weight on the scales tipping towards second order, for reasons outlined in the patch snippet above.
As you play, I'd like you all to keep the above in mind, and keep note of how it feels to order first or order second. We're keeping our ear to the ground for this one.
Balance-wise my initial impression is that this would be fine. Memory-wise I'm less of a fan due to already having some trouble remembering the +4/-3 dichotomy (should just be +4/-4 dang it).
Something about the Raid Link here... I need to confirm...
The raid boss set a Piercing Charm which lowered Kingambit's Attack stage, while
Piercing said:
While the user is performing this move:
The effects of abilities, items, types, and moves of opposing teams; as well as any conditions and markers created by those teams; are all ignored.
So In my thought, the Defiant ability doesn't react or interfere the move Charm, but the stage-lowering effect triggers Defiant(while Defiant is exist and not suppressed), so I guess this piercing attack should activate defiant and give attack boosts to kingambit(?)
Balance-wise my initial impression is that this would be fine. Memory-wise I'm less of a fan due to already having some trouble remembering the +4/-3 dichotomy (should just be +4/-4 dang it).
what if we did this and also changed stages to +4/-4 in general so there's still only one thing to remember :)
(I don't know if this is a good idea but I'd like it)
Something about the Raid Link here... I need to confirm...
The raid boss set a Piercing Charm which lowered Kingambit's Attack stage, while
And according to
So In my thought, the Defiant ability doesn't react or interfere the move Charm, but the stage-lowering effect triggers Defiant(while Defiant is exist and not suppressed), so I guess this piercing attack should activate defiant and give attack boosts to kingambit(?)
You should, you don't have infinite JCs!! Try some small Lvl 0 matches to learn the stuffs, it might be hard at first, but is actually super easy!!
I'd also suggest reading the Handbook when you're free!! Gives a good insight about the rules & mechanics, & has a guide on how to ref & battle (& make subs, & combos, & everything...)
Side note & personal suggestion from my side: Please remember to repost the queue wherever it exists!! Please!! (Might as well read the first few rule posts of PCT as well, it has everything about how to claim & the costs required!!!)
You should, you don't have infinite JCs!! Try some small Lvl 0 matches to learn the stuffs, it might be hard at first, but is actually super easy!!
I'd also suggest reading the Handbook when you're free!! Gives a good insight about the rules & mechanics, & has a guide on how to ref & battle (& make subs, & combos, & everything...)
Side note & personal suggestion from my side: Please remember to repost the queue wherever it exists!! Please!! (Might as well read the first few rule posts of PCT as well, it has everything about how to claim & the costs required!!!)
jc is a currency. You spend it by playing and gain it by reffing.
if you have no jc you cannot play. Specifically you will not be able to use the prize claim queue since that is where jc is tallied.
The game only functions if people are willing to ref it, so jc is the mechanism to make sure everyone who is playing is also reffing.
I've been told that it might be productive for me to draft up an instructional resource on "How to write Battle Tree flavor." On the one hand, Tree flavor was always intended to be low-stakes fun with no real expectation for the ref to write particularly well. I'm slightly concerned that giving too much guidance to the ref would imply certain expectations of quality of workmanship that do not exist. Besides that, for me to write an instructive guide feels a little bit pretentious; I don't have the credentials to tell people how to write. Regardless, I will admit that having concrete instruction beyond "maybe throw a Trainer battle in there if you're stumped lol" would be a net positive for this Facility that I am (supposed to be) in charge of. So, I'll probably end up writing a guiding document.
Before I start drafting things up, does anybody have specific questions about Tree flavor writing that they would like addressed?
Battle Tree writing guide is up. It's meant to help out refs who either: haven't written a story before, don't know what/how to write, or who lose the plot mid-run and can't figure out how to proceed.
If you're already confident in your writing ability then you probably don't need to read it (but you still can if you want to).
HeliosAflame Guide to First Ordering: Or How I Learnt to Stop Having Anxiety and Love the Electrode
Goals
Learning to first order and write substitutions is the most intimidating part of learning BBP. This guide hopes to ease that burden by teaching how to think about first orders and going over some common substitutions a player might want to write.
Some of the moves used and example situations in this guide might change over time and patches, but the general methodoloy should remain helpful to anyone learning BBP.
Evaluating Your Opponent's Move Pool
The first thing you need to do is evaluate what moves your opponent has that are relevant to the coming round. I recommend using this modified version of the combo finder that highlights most moves that are likely to be relevant, however you can also do this step by using the standard combo finder or looking at the opposing pokemon profile directly.
Relevant moves are generally split into 2 categories.
1. Moves that are inherently powerful that you want to block your opponent from using no matter what your round orders are.
This includes this like stealth rock, pain split, acid spray + rock blast, a powerful se attack.
2. Moves that can disrupt your round orders and give the opponent an advantage.
These are moves such as counter, taunt, substitute, fly, protect. Things that can make you waste your turns, or reflect your damage back.
Example: first ordering with donphan vs incineroar at level 1. vs
Incineroar does not have any strong se attacks vs donphan but they do have will-o-wisp which could be problematic for donphan, who loses a lot of value when special attacking.
They also have good disruption with taunt, fake out, protect.
Deciding Your Plan For The Round
Generally as first order you should be focusing on inherently powerful moves, catch all disruption and powerful standard attacks. I would normally recommend against trying to do multiple complicated actions while first ordering, or any plan that involves "first x happens, and then now that x has happened, I do y is good due to x." These plans have a tendency to fall apart dramatically if either x or y gets disrupted.
1. Inherently powerful moves are the same as for enemy move pool evaluation, but favoring things that stand on their own.
Stealth rock and pain split are still good (especially if you started on lower life), but acid spray + rock blast tends to be a lot worse, since it relies on hitting the opponent with attacks on the next few steps, and with second order the opponent can order protect, substitute, evasive moves, or other ways of denying the follow up.
2. Catch all disruptive moves are things like spore or fake out
Their general purpose is to let you spend less time first ordering and more time second ordering by trading actions with the opponent in a way that is hard to deny.
3. Powerful super effective standard attacks are pretty self explanatory.
Earthquake, Flamethrower, wild charge. Attacks with high numbers that hit your opponent's weak points. Bonus points if you have STAB bonus.
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Example: Donphan has stealthrock as an inherently powerful move they would love to resolve. It is an almost guarenteed 24 damage that disrupts the opponents switching and soft locks incineroar into a bad match up. They also have earthquake as an inherently powerful SE STAB attack to trade well step by step in this match up.
Protecting Your Plan
Once you have identified which opposing moves can disrupt your chosen orders for the round you can use substitutions to get around them.
Here are some common disruptive moves and ways to bypass them.
Protective moves can be subbed around if you are trying to resolve something important (like a combo or major status) or if you think the match up is bad enough for the opponent that they will lose out despite ordering second.
Subs should attack the opponent in ways that beat protection or gain value without interacting with your opponent.
Common tools: phantom force, feint, moonlight, swords dance, light screen.
Example: If my opponent is to use a protective move, use swords dance the first time and chill otherwise.
only 1 swords dance is used to save en against orders like protect ~ roar ~ protect
Substitute is dangerous if you want to resolve non attack actions, or if your attacks have less than 10 bap.
Subs should attempt to break the decoy with multi hit attacks or 10 bap.
Generally it is easier to check if your opponent has a decoy instead of checking if they are using substitute.
Example: At the start of my turn, if my opponent has a decoy and my opponent is not evasive, use earthquake.
Sub destroys the decoy in a single hit when it can, but also avoids substitute ~ fly ~ fly skipping your actions by avoiding the earthquake.
This can take the form of disable, taunt, imprison and other forms of control.
The normal way to sub around move disruption is using "if able". This is a sub with no conditions other than the move being legal to use.
Example: At the start of my turn, if my opponent does not have stealth rock, use stealth rock. + 3 attacks as my main order
Now if I get taunted or have stealth rock sealed I will attack the opponent instead of doing nothing, making them go down in action economy.
Evasive moves are counted by using different move types that they do not evade, or by going slower than them.
Some moves also directly counter evasives, such as thunder auto hitting flying pokemon for massive damage.
Example: If my opponent is to use fly, use heat wave.
Example 2: If my opponent is evasive, use avalanche. variant: If my opponent is evasive, use fly.
Using slower moves or your own evasive is often the most effective answer if an opponent has multiple evasive moves, since it will beat all of them in a single sub.
If my opponent is to use counter, use dazzling gleam.
example: At the start of my turn, if I am asleep and I do not have sleep talk status, use sleep talk.
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Example: So with donphan we decided that we wanted to resolve stealth rock once, then earthquake in the remaining steps.
Incineroar's relevant disruptive moves were taunt, fake out, protect. We do not care about substitute since all of our main order moves beat substitute.
If we ordered stealth rock~earthquake~earthquake our opponent could order taunt~attack~attack or fake out~attack~attack, denying us our stealth rock.
Taunt and Fake out fall into "move disruption" category of problems, so they are solved by an "if able" sub.
earthquake~earthquake~earthquake
If my opponent has a protective status, use curse
[once] At the start of my turn, if able, use stealth rock.
Now if the incineroar taunts us, we will hit them with an earthquake in return instead of skipping our turn.
Disrupting Your Opponent's Game Plan
Disrupting your opponent's plans is mostly about making sure your substitutes do not end up working against you.
A common example would be writing "if my opponent is to use leech seed, use taunt."
This can be abused by changing speed so that first leech seed resolves, then taunt resolves, skipping your turn.
One way around this can be writing subs that check the current state of the game instead of trying to pre-empt your opponents actions. For example "at the start of my turn, if I am inflicted with leech seed, use rapid spin" is generally safer than trying to taunt it. There tend to be less ways to break these subs, and the things that break it tend to be things that stop attacks in general, which is something your other subs usually deal with. (here you need to beat decoy and evasive, but you probably already had subs for decoy and evasive)
Another case to think about is if the opponent has a strong move that loses to protect you might be able to stop them clicking it for the whole round.
consider "If my opponent is to use leech seed, use protect."
In this situation your opponent can type leech seed ~ leech seed ~ x and still resolve it because you cannot protect twice in a row.
However if instead you sub "if my opponent is to use leech seed and is not to use leech seed any other step this round, use protect."
Now the opponent either uses leech seed twice and waste one action, or they type it once and you can protect it.
You get 3 state clauses with every substitute. Here is a list of state clauses and other additions you might want to consider writing so that your subs are not abused.
My opponent does not have a decoy. (Stick this on all your non attacks unless you already have a sub that beats decoy)
My opponent does not have a protective status (can be useful if you did not have room to have a specific anti protect sub)
I am not slower than my opponent (when first ordering you win speed ties, so you often want to check if you have the same speed or more than your opponent)
Trick room is not active (same reason as checking speed)
Does not have evasive
In combination (not a state clause but can be important to check, especially with taunt.)
General Sub Considerations
Are your subs in the right order. If 2 subs would trigger at the same time, the one written out higher up will trigger in preference
Are you writing "push back" on your subs. If your main order contains different moves, it is usually correct to write "and push back" on all of your substitutions
Do you actually know the moves you are typing and does your opponent. Check you did not get confused, especially if pokemon are below the level of the battle (for example someone running a level 3 pokemon in level 4 content)
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Example: Will-o-Wisp is a move that we can punish with protect, forcing the opponent to type it twice if they want to burn us.
our subs can be rounded out with "If my opponent is to use a burn inflicting move and is not to use a burn inflicting move any other step this round, use protect." We should also move the stealth rock sub in front of the curse sub, because if the opponent protects we prefer to resolve stealth rock instead of curse.
Bringing all of this together our full order becomes:
earthquake~earthquake~earthquake
[once] At the start of my turn, if able, use stealth rock.
If my opponent has a protective status, use curse
If my opponent is to use a burn inflicting move and is not to use a burn inflicting move any other step this round, use protect.
If our opponent taunts us, they eat an earthquake for 23 while trading 0 damage back. If they try to protect through the round then switch out then we get free set up and if our opponent wants to wisp us they spend 2 actions inflicting burn and take 34 damage in return from earthquake. We can't stop fake out, but fake out also can't stop us. it deals 2 damage and does not disrupt our order set.
Bonus Examples
level 1 sableeye vs lycanroc vs
fake out ~ will-o~wisp ~ night shade.
[step 2, 3] If my opponent is to use stealth rock then use taunt and push back.
[step 2, 3] When I am hit, if my opponent does not have a decoy, use metal burst and push back.
lycanroc has stealth rock as an inherently powerful move, and taunt, protect, substitute and for disruption.
Sableye is very powerful while second ordering, so our plan for the round is to just try and get to second order without taking huge hits or letting stealth rock resolve.
We only care about step 2 and 3 because fake out stops anything happening in step 1, and we don't care about protect or quick guard because we actively want both sides to skip steps in this round. (note if our opponent had safeguard we could be got by protect + safeguard)
Will-o-wisp is safe to use because it is priority due to prankster, and the opponent has not had any turns to set up due to fake-out effectively removing the first step of the round.
"when I am hit, use metal burst" mostly effects step 3, and allows us to punish any large hits lycanroc attempts to trade back. For example it would retaliate vs facade + play rough in combination. The main thing it doesn't stop is facade comboes in step 2 (since you have already spent your turn resolving will-o-wisp). as an alternative you could directly sub "if my opponent is to use facade in combination, use counter" and deny their combo use completely in return for not punishing more general attacks in step 3.
level 1 choice spec typhlosion vs ferrothorn vs
flamethrower x 3
If my opponent has a decoy, use seismic toss
Ferrothorn has stealth rock, protect and substitute.
Typhlosion has choice specs. We can only write one sub, but we also don't care too much what our opponent can do because we are doing about 30 damage per attack.
We had to choose between subbing for protect or decoy, but decoy is more annoying because it makes 2 of your attacks trade for 21 damage instead of 60. Protect is a little annoying but even then we get to keep stacking flash fire, and if they play defensively we will have a full hp choice spec typhlosion to abuse second order next round.
To anyone who got to the end, thank you for reading! I hope people find this useful as a way to approach their games of BBP.
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