I think the formula used for Ash's goal in Journeys has a lot of potential to be used as a game - travelling through portions of regions trying to climb up through a ranking.
-
Check out the relaunch of our general collection, with classic designs and new ones by our very own Pissog!
-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
I think the formula used for Ash's goal in Journeys has a lot of potential to be used as a game - travelling through portions of regions trying to climb up through a ranking.
If this is still about Reborn then I honestly think it strikes the right balance by making the full notes for each new field a collectible, because it encourages exploration while also not overwhelming the player with too much info all at once. For Gyms, you get a bit of advice that's more specifically tailored to how the Leader makes use of the field without needing a wall of text that gives a full rundown of everything the field does (which you can consult at your own leisure through the field index once you've collected the notes anyway).
I think people tend to bounce off fangames pretty quickly if they're tedious in the beginning, so it makes sense not to frontload too much info, even if that would suit the hypothetical newcomer who's eager (and able) to absorb all of it. It sucks if you lose a battle because of some out-of-nowhere mechanic you had zero knowledge of, but that's always a risk in any Pokemon game.
That wouldn't be *hard* to do in Emerald itself.
It's just... do you know how many Frontier mons are in that game?
The ones I talk about all the time tbh. Just a little extra spice and adjustments to lower the barrier between in-game trash and slightly competitive mons.
By those I mean earlier Nature Mints and all that. Nothing crazy. Just the kind of stuff people already do in PkHex to save time anyway.
Another slightly more complex thing I'd like to do would be changing one of the Battle Tents to a Battle Dome version of the World Tournament with Leaders and Champions.
That would probably require me learning the decomp though and the whole thing would be kinda messy.
I kinda miss Stadium's Gym Leader Castle...
Real talk, having 6 Pokemon eligible for in-game battle was a mistake. Either you have a team of 6 battle-ready mons and few things are more challenging than your average wild encounter (unless you give all the trainers degenerate strats that can potentially wipe you), or every trainer is a slog that costs a ton of resources or many tedious trips to the Pokemon Center to recover from.
A speedrun timer.
If you have a strategy guide and a rabbit's foot, you can beat any turn-based game. Speedrunning Pokemon can be a lot more interesting since you absolutely cannot grind or drag your team to a Pokemon Center if you want competitive times. The randomness can be a pain but a lot of speedruns use starters or early mons to mitigate a lot of it. Maybe also have an in-game reward for reaching certain times?
Talk about a "realistic" change that's boring as sin to play. I'm not opposed to some slight EV tweaks to add some spice and mitigate your own EV gain, but stopping everything to grind just to have a chance, especially before the E4 where some fangames love to spring this on you, is the worst.
And if you want to max out EVs, you ought to make getting and resetting EVs real easy so no one's shaving years off their life. Please make the Vitamins cheaper!
Gen I was a strong start for the series' stories: you had an immediate goal that put your pride at stake, then when you get to know the world better, you're eased into stopping the mafia from treating your animal friends badly for profit. Along the way your rival will make life worse for you so you remember to kick his butt whenever possible, culminating in a battle that will decide who your surrogate father loves and who gets shafted. It's far from a deep narrative and being forced to win against your rival diffuses the tension by a lot, but later games get so wrapped up in abstract apocalyptic stakes and annoying characters that the OG games' story is still my favorite.
Fixed*
But real talk, the conception of "fixing" things and ignoring that 90% of "fixes" rely so much on preexisting examples is horribly missed. And then we enter elitist mob mindsets of "we can do better than X game dev"
It's just toxic over the years, and I can attest that as a Sonic fan
*Also come on. Sonichu is both Sonic and Pikachu. And Pokemon has way more porn
I like the select 3 out of 6 only format. Comp may benefit from this as well. Gym leaders also used off "coverage" mons to further incentivize the player to swap rentals too!
I feel it kinda makes the battles too short, it depends on the format for me tbh.
This is extremely underrated.
It's a lot easier to work on something when you have a foundation to build on.
Now I understand why people make fangames instead of fully original IPs.
And why there are fangames based on other fangames.
Fangames that are just based on original IPs and are otherwise original works are one thing, but fangames that are just heavily modified versions of an existing game are another. Pokémon fangames are largely the latter, and to some degree that limits what can be done with them. I'll admit that I haven't really delved extensively into Pokémon fangames though. The only instance I'm aware of for making an original game that still plays largely identically to a Pokémon game is from the makers of the Touhoumon hack, that would go on to make another Pokemon-style Touhou fangame that is wholly original and not just a mod, featuring a lot of mechanics unique to the concept while still playing fundamentally identical to the actual games, with minor adjustments here and there (such as adjusting the damage formula to remove level from the equation and reduce random variance from 85-115% to 85-100%). Making an original game with the same core gameplay as opposed to just a mod allows for a lot more creative freedom with the solid gameplay formula the series has potential for but only barely scratches, for the most part. But you basically never actually see anyone pull it off, never mind competently.
You guys had fangames/ROM hack discourse without me?
Anyway, I have two things to say.
Screw this ugly-ass Hisuian Typhlosion back sprite from Radical Red.
Inclement Emerald is my go-to example of a good rom hack that increases difficulty, adds new content, and making playthroughs a blast with Magic Guard Delphox, Huge Power regular Mawile, early Adaptability Skrelp, and Pseudo-legendary Vikavolt.
Going through my two boxes worth of used Pokemon made me want to post some highlights.
Anyway, I have two things to say.Screw this ugly-ass Hisuian Typhlosion back sprite from Radical Red.
Inclement Emerald is my go-to example of a good rom hack that increases difficulty, adds new content, and making playthroughs a blast with Magic Guard Delphox, Huge Power regular Mawile, early Adaptability Skrelp, and Pseudo-legendary Vikavolt.
Going through my two boxes worth of used Pokemon made me want to post some highlights.
Last edited:
The only chance Pokemon Ranger has at a revival is as a mobile game. I don't say this for arbitrary doomer reasons, but because phones & tablets are the only modern gaming platform where Ranger makes sense.
I’m just keeping my DS and Ranger games forever.
People who double-post low-effort single-sentence opinions suck
People who don't tag or quote users they are talking about suck
I don't dislike fangames at all (I enjoyed Radical Red a lot), but I do hate it when they make a Pokémon (or regional variant) and then give it an ability that makes it immune to a double weakness. An immunity to a single weakness is fine, but an immunity to a double weakness seems too much, especially when synergetic dual types end up having fewer weaknesses overall just with a crucial double weakness. In context, out of the current 900+ official Pokémon we have right now, we only have two that are immune to a double weakness. One is an alternate form (which has a tradeoff that gives another alternate form a useless ability) and another is a cover legendary. GF could have easily made the Coalossal line immune to Water via signature Steam Engine, but they didn't. Yet fangame creators love giving Rock/Steel- and Steel/Poison-types Levitate. And then there is a fan made ability that gives Rock-type and Stealth Rock immunity, which is somehow given to Pokémon that have double weakness to Rock. It feels too cheap and too convenient in my opinion.
I have to say it: Touch! Generations games can only be ported properly on devices with tactile feedback, stylus recommended. This includes the Pokémon Ranger games, which are made for the Nintendo DS (the Capture Styler is clearly based on a NDS stylus).
plz elaborate
That's a popular opinion.
And that's a fact.
I agree, Swampert with Sap Sipper is ridiculous.
I only allow one Pokémon family to have no weakness thanks to its Ability, and that's the Tynamo line!
Yeah, I think this kinda thing in general points to a common flaw in Pokémon romhack balancing - that being trying to buff everything into viability. This mindset is reasonable on paper, but it just doesn’t work in reality because weaknesses are also an important part of game balance. There needs to be a give-and-take when doing these kinds of adjustments, and I think many hackers fail to note that kind of thing.
I quoted the part about Mountaineer specifically because I think it’s a great example. I think RR’s balance changes are mostly sound, but Mountaineer is a bit much for Mega-Centiskorch (for those unaware, RR translates most G-Maxes as Megas). It eliminates Centiskorch’s only design flaw and makes it much more difficult to oppose once it sets up a Flame Charge. To my knowledge there’s no RR meta so it’s not a problem there, but you’ve still gotta fight it in the hands of AI.
Also, as a sidenote, I think some Pokémon being weak adds to the game, not detracts from it. Personally I think a ‘mon like Spinda is a lot more charming with its dumb 360 BST than it would be with a more optimized statline, and that’s just one example of many
This. As someone who did try to balance GSC/Stadium 2, I can safely say that is not possible in any way, shape or form.
At best, you'll be able to have mons function in competitive tiers like how Smogon currently organize them.
Now that's something I disagree with.
Don't get me wrong, Spinda does not need an optimized stat spread. It needs a functional one. Trying to make mons more unique is good, but it doesn't matter when they're weaker than some mid-stage evos.
It'd be really cool if they had a thing where many/most gimmick mons had a straight-80 stat spread. Unknown, Castform, Spinda, make them a category similar to the base-100 mythicals. They wouldn't be /good/, it's the same stats that Glailie has, but it's enough stats to be usable in-game and maybe find a use in the meta. Instead, we get situations where, even in their debut generation, most gimmicks are utter crap and not even worth considering for your team. Sure, you CAN run Castform in-game, I've done it, but it's not actually good in any way. Why make mons where we're not supposed to use them?
I think the only Mon game that pulls off "everything is viable" is Monster Sanctuary, but that's because:
- There are only 111 monsters.
- Every monster has two palette-swapped form changes with increased stats.
- It plays nothing like Pokémon beyond being an RPG. (All battles are 3v3, you can theoretically have every positive and negative status on a monster at once, elements are much less prominent, there's equipment, etc.)
- You'll need to use a variety of strategies throughout the main story.
- It's streamlined.
There is nothing wrong about "cheating" in comp pokemon. Getting perfect mons legit on cartridge is extremely time-intensive and tedious. The actual game also isn't affected by whether the mons were obtained legally or not. Coming up with proper teams and battling should be the hard part, not grinding and running around with a Slugma in your party, praying for a perfect mon
It's not to an "everything is viable" level, but that Pokemon-style Touhou fangame I mentioned a few posts back is pretty solid as far as balance goes. Each character gets three different maxed forms, and typically at least one of them is viable in the sense that it sees above average usage in the game's PvP format (how many Pokémon fangames even have a functional PvP with a site for tracking statistics?). 126 characters x3 for 378 maxed forms, of those roughly 30% saw above average usage in PvP (about 1.58% usage) at one point or another during the game's active PvP scene, and only one particular character ever saw more than 10% usage, which I think was largely favoritism as it doesn't seem to be particularly outstanding (Poison/Fire w/ Levitate clone, but that's about it). The standard PvP format (though not the only one) is bring 6 pick 3, and there are no bans whatsoever outside of species / item clause, so it's not directly comparable to a Smogon tier format, but it's pretty solid.
Well alright then, if you want me to be totally upfront about it, your incessant "[species] should be [type] for no other reason than because I say so" and "[move] totally sucks but I'm not going to bother explaining why I think this is the case" posts are dull, redundant, irritating, and most of all thoroughly uninteresting; not least because you insist on double-posting rather than combining separate opinions.
Your contributions to this forum are rarely more than clutter and if it wasn't for the fact that other users still choose to engage with you I could happily mute your posts and not spend any more time thinking about them. But there we are.