Pokemon Ultra S&M - Let's Minecraft Pikachu and Eevee Quest

Cyke

You can always turn off the exp share. No biggie.

I guess each gen has its goods and its bads, and that is great to know.

I couldn't agree more.

By the way, as much ahead as your rival was of your team in R/B/Y, you cannot also deny how predictable and monotonous things were back then. There was no Dark, Steel and Fairy types, there were not support abilities, damage dealt by Attack or S. Attack was determined only by your Defense, as S. Defense wasn't a thing. Sure once you got to the League your team in all likeness was several levels below, but even Lance was predictable as fuck. The move repertory was also very limited and there was a total absence of any dragon type moves, and only one Ghost type.

Nostalgia is a good thing only as long as you don't let it cloud your judgement. Now things are more diverse than ever and you cannot tell what moves your opponent is going to use, as the AI has also been improving with each new gen.

Yeah, I rather stick to current times, while I look back with a smile at the era that got me hooked to the franchise. But it would be really hard for me to go back to those times seeing what we have nowadays.

Nobody here was being a genwunner. Is pretty much a given that games are MUCH better now, but it's undeniable they are much easier to beat the main storyline.

XY is very easy, even without Exp.Share.; I can't remember a single gym that gave me trouble and the rivals are a joke. I wish the games had a "I'm an adult, bring it on" option at the beginning, that would increase the difficulty of battles.

Nekketsu

Now they are much easier? No man, no, you're wrong there. Pokemon never was hard in the first place. Because it's a franchise where victory are defeat are only determined by two factors: your pokemon team and level, and the strategy you choose in battle.

Strategy was not needed back in R/B/Y, because the gym leaders and pretty much every single trainer that challenged you was not only easy to dealt with but also very predictable. Poor Brock and Misty cried at the mere sight of my Bulbasaur, and once I had a fully evolved team I wooped ass till I got to the League. That the legendary birds and Mewtwo gave me more trouble says it all.

If you want a challenge do some nuzlocke or other crazy shit or simply get to the Battle Arena or the Competitive. You won't find any real challenge in a game aimed mainly at kids.

Purple Hermit

Well, they could do like they did with B2W2 and include a hard mode

Just not lock it behind a incredibly inane unlock requirement

MetaMario

@Purple:

Well, they could do like they did with B2W2 and include a hard mode

Just not lock it behind a incredibly inane unlock requirement

I really wanted to try it, but I only had White 2 =_=

Although here's a query for everyone: does anyone play with the Set style?

.access timeco.

@Nekketsu:

Strategy was not needed back in R/B/Y, because the gym leaders and pretty much every single trainer that challenged you was not only easy to dealt with but also very predictable.

That hasn't changed at all.

Nekketsu

@.access:

That hasn't changed at all.

In a sense, yes. Though it's undeniable challenges are more fun now.

Jabberwok

How many people here turned off the Exp Share in X/Y or ORAS? I turned it off halfway to X/Y's fourth gym because my team was getting horribly overleveled. Hell, I even had to put my starter in the PC for a while, which has never, ever happened before. Never touched the Exp Share in ORAS until postgame training.

I'm definitely in the camp of wanting ambush rivals since that adds a much more desperate feel to the battles, which always makes them more memorable. Wally's character might be yawn-worthy, but his battle theme is pretty cool and he ambushes you at the end of Victory Road. There's something to be said for rivals being one step ahead of you in gyms or catching pokemon rather than constantly chasing your legacy. I thought RSE was close to striking a good balance until May never gets the third evolution of her starter in the main game. Another mid-game battle with Wally would have helped too.

Personally, I'm also a fan of needing to use HMs along the main route. I can certainly see why they removed it, but I think keeping them in adds to the feeling of needing to be prepared for anything while out adventuring. In X/Y it felt like there were very distinct, optional puzzle areas and little integration into the main route and I didn't like that.

And while we're at it, more complex maps would be appreciated too. One big loop is boring.

Nekketsu

I always turn it off whenever I get it. Exp Share ought to be used only when you have finished the League and want to train as many pokemon as you wish.

Robby

@Nekketsu:

You can always turn off the exp share. No biggie.

You can. But at that point the game is designed around it, and there is zero downside to it. And they don't give you the option of an old school share to help out just one monster.

Since they undid the rebalanced experience higher level monsters give you in BW, turning it off is only being stubborn. It's not a built in designed aspect of the game at the point so it's wonky, it just over-levels your back team too fast. If you turn it off you're severely under leveled due to the ratio of trainers and wild monsters and how much exp you're expected to earn.

Maybe if it halved the exp of the leader, or only gave 25% to the team, or was even just split up a little more? Or if the game was scaled to accomodate that gain ratio, Then it'd be fine. But your entire team by default being level 60 without any grinding by the E4 is weird and makes them a complete cakewalk if you have any sort of decent team at all.

There's a middle ground between "tedious pointless grind" and "super easy novice mode." and they are not hitting that balance at all.

In my replay of SoulSilver that I'm doing currently, my team is massively underleveled because I'd been using types, stabs, and weaknesses to get through things, and no grinding, and as a result by the endgame I'm a solid 15 levels below the gym leaders and rocket bosses… and that's kind of the other extreme and its no good because I'm just getting wiped by pure level difference at that point.

BW was perfect with its "weak monster earn more from strong monsters". You just go out and kill two or three audinos in the highest area you can find and they caught you up right quick... and then it slowed down once you reached the equivilent level of the area. It also prevented you from recklessly overlevelling.

.access timeco.

Apparently people managed to find out what the final typing of the starters will be based on an overlook of the japanese official website:
https://m.reddit.com/r/pokemon/comments/4jeg88/spoiler_starters_final_evolution_types_leaked/ There is no way to guarantee 100% those are the types, but I think it makes a lot of sense. Unless those other two types belong to Solgaleo and Lunaala which I can't see happening (none fit Lunaala).

Md-Martin

If those typings are true I'm going to have a harder time picking a starter.

Wagomu

As much as those typings are interesting, I don't really like where I think those designs would go with those typings. Plus, Rowlet's secondary typing would be advantageous against both other starters.

It could easily happen since first form is never a good indication of later forms, so I won't discount the possibility. I'm just a little cynical towards what this might do to their designs.

Hekti

Doesn't changes my mind on my picks.
Rowlet in Moon and Litten in Sun

Ruin

BW also did the rival thing better considering you had a friend, a friendly rival, and an actual rival that all did different things with their teams, without actually making it too difficult to deal with.
The issue with XY isn't so much that the characters are your friends so much that they're all braindead stupid in regards to how their teams are built and programmed to function. Granted, poor team arrangement isn't anything new considering Blue fights you with an Abra in his third encounter.
There's also the fact of the matter that most of the people here and who complain about rivals and challenge are grown ass adults with familiarity with the systems and gameplay of pokemon for over years of play, rather than kids just starting out and blindly flailing around, gradually learning that, no, 4 fire moves on a charizard isn't the smartest way to play. older players have the brain capacity to actually plan their teams with moveset synergies and held items early, which will affect the difficulty of things, shockingly.

basically, pokemon is for kids and you're all old and not hip

Wagomu

My main problem with the friends in XY is that I didn't want to be friends with any of them. I get that you could never really roleplay around rival encounters and such, but I can work with that. What I can't deal with is being interrupted by a pack of pathetic wenises every ten steps because they met my character once and imprinted me as their mother or something.

Robby

Fire/ground I'd be cool with. But water/fighting, man, that's a great typing with decent stab coverage and overall good defenses… that's sort of wasted on Polywrath and a legendary. I really like that typing.

Curses.

(I still want another water/bug that DOESN'T evolve out of it immediately. Stupid surskit)

Cyan D. Funk

Pokemon SUN and MOON - Fightin' Clown Seals

Robby

@Ruin:

There's also the fact of the matter that most of the people here and who complain about rivals and challenge are grown ass adults with familiarity with the systems and gameplay of pokemon for over years of play, rather than kids just starting out and blindly flailing around, gradually learning that, no, 4 fire moves on a charizard isn't the smartest way to play. older players have the brain capacity to actually plan their teams with moveset synergies and held items early, which will affect the difficulty of things, shockingly.

basically, pokemon is for kids and you're all old and not hip

Going back through the old games is still a bit of a challenge even with all the knowledge, unless you seriously overlevel.

And… they HAD a hard mode in BW2. Locked behind stupid stupid requisites, but they had it. THey're totally capable of adding in the option to face higher level smarter trainers and gym leaders with better stuff and more mons.

A New Game+ mode would go a long ways too. Keep all your old mons in storage lock until a certain point and replay the game at a much higher level. Or let you pull out mons but reset their moves and levels to base, so you can run through with a totally different setup. SOMETHING.

NateRich

Those few Victory Road instances and S.S.Anne Gary aren't unfair battles. We get to use tons of potions…that's unfair lol. In single player Pokemon the only challenge is fighting with a horribly underleveled team. (Like rebattling the Elite Four right away)

.access timeco.

There is an interesting thing in the image numbering order, though. There you actually have:

! 1-Grass
2-Flying
3-Ground
4-Fire
5-Water
6-Fighting
! The fact that Litten's secondary type comes before Fire in the order may also suggest that Ground doesn't belong to it, but to Rowlet. In this case, Rowlet evolution would be Grass/Ground while Litten would stay as pure Fire. Or maybe they just hosted the images in the wrong order.

KaizokuJinbei

If Popplio does go fighting for it's secondary then I might have to choose him.

Nekketsu

@Robby:

You can. But at that point the game is designed around it, and there is zero downside to it. And they don't give you the option of an old school share to help out just one monster.

Since they undid the rebalanced experience higher level monsters give you in BW, turning it off is only being stubborn. It's not a built in designed aspect of the game at the point so it's wonky, it just over-levels your back team too fast. If you turn it off you're severely under leveled due to the ratio of trainers and wild monsters and how much exp you're expected to earn.

Maybe if it halved the exp of the leader, or only gave 25% to the team, or was even just split up a little more? Or if the game was scaled to accomodate that gain ratio, Then it'd be fine. But your entire team by default being level 60 without any grinding by the E4 is weird and makes them a complete cakewalk if you have any sort of decent team at all.

There's a middle ground between "tedious pointless grind" and "super easy novice mode." and they are not hitting that balance at all.

In my replay of SoulSilver that I'm doing currently, my team is massively underleveled because I'd been using types, stabs, and weaknesses to get through things, and no grinding, and as a result by the endgame I'm a solid 15 levels below the gym leaders and rocket bosses… and that's kind of the other extreme and its no good because I'm just getting wiped by pure level difference at that point.

BW was perfect with its "weak monster earn more from strong monsters". You just go out and kill two or three audinos in the highest area you can find and they caught you up right quick... and then it slowed down once you reached the equivilent level of the area. It also prevented you from recklessly overlevelling.

Between overleved and underleveled I prefer the later. Yeah, it's kinda unfair in a sense, but I like it more because it poses more challenging.

Noqanky

I personally have a hard time believing that the people making the site would have the assets set for the types of the starter evolutions so ahead of time when these things are usually kept confidential for an extremely long time. We didn't know the final typings of the X and Y starters until the game was out/leaked (and even then people thought greninja would be water/fighting and chesnaught would be grass/dark).

So while the typings wouldn't be terrible, I'm remaining skeptical on this. If it does wind up being true though I'm just going to be amused at the level of noobishness something like this displays.

Hiroy

As for other things that made XY too easy for me… It's how nuts the distribution was. Before the third gym, you can already get some pretty powerful stuff that made anything the main game threw almost redundant(I had an Aerodactyl and Snorlax >_>). Not to mention the monsters the game just straight up gives to you, soley to promote the Mega Stone feature. In addition to that, there's Team Flare. I don't know if the other games were just as obnoxious, but there was a point where I thought the game threw way too many grunts at you, thus alot of free easy exp.

That said, I would not really suggest things to make the game better. It's my least favorite, sure. But it's alright that the game wasn't entirely in my target demographic.

Exp share is something I don't feel anything about, even though it heavily conflicts with the new EXP system that was implemented in Gen 5. I think some percentage balance could be a good fix, but I'm actually alright with it. Nurses in routes are a godsend. I feel like I should dislike it, but they are really cleverly placed within areas. There are moments where I'd feel battered while thinking of using whatever limited resource I had before pushing ahead, and like a light within a dark tunnel... you see a nurse/doctor. I mean, the games could get rid of them, but they are such a nice dynamic to longer mandatory dungeons.

Cyan D. Funk

X and Y without the Exp. Share on is like a completely different game.

Jabberwok

Kalos had some major pacing issues. The distance between the first and second gyms is insanely large and made me think the game was going to be really big, but then gyms 3-6 are all super close. It's that big starting distance that really throws everything else off.

Without the Exp. Share the game is moderately difficult but hardly a challenge.

KageKageKing

[hide][/hide]

Nobodyman

It might just be me, but I feel like at least part of the reason for the new Exp. Share system is that the Pokedex is so massive at this point, that the designers had to incorporate a more convenient system to keep it a more feasible task.

Mr. Reloaded

The only huge benefit to the EXP Share is the amount of grinding it cuts down, which is good.

So the complaints of it never made any sense, as it certainly isn't making the game easier.

Jabberwok

Eh, just lock the boosted Exp. Share behind some requirement like the E4 or the bonus boss champion. Held item for one pokemon to gain exp during the story, then a held item to distribute exp to the other party pokemon in post-game. Or just revert it to the improved version then.

There's a difference between grinding and just fighting whatever trainers you see on a route. If you're doing the latter and still have pokemon 5-10 levels above the next gym leader, the balance needs to be fixed.

Md-Martin

I will say that in Gen 1 and it's remakes at least it gave you a decent task to get it. Capture 50 Pokemon and get the X&Y EXP Share would be a good way to do it.

Or use the old EXP Share and offer the newer version after defeating the Elite 4.

GetsugaZoro

@Nobodyman:

It might just be me, but I feel like at least part of the reason for the new Exp. Share system is that the Pokedex is so massive at this point, that the designers had to incorporate a more convenient system to keep it a more feasible task.

I believe Masuda has said in a interview they made the game easier because of the current gaming climate where you can just get an app, be bored uninstall and get 30 different ones in just 5 mins, they are making it easier so it goes smoother for people that might be subjective to this and drop the game for that reason.

MetaMario

@Nobodyman:

It might just be me, but I feel like at least part of the reason for the new Exp. Share system is that the Pokedex is so massive at this point, that the designers had to incorporate a more convenient system to keep it a more feasible task.

I'm on board with this in this regard; raising Pokemon to get their evolved forms for the dex takes time. If we didn't have the current Exp.Share, man oh man it'd take forever.

I spent over 200 hours on HeartGold. A lot of it was using the old Exp. Share on Mt. Silver, healing, going back with a new mon, etc.

madriano

!
!
The fanarts are glorious.

.access timeco.

The new EXP share is a need for competitive game and for completing the dex. The problem is that it also makes the walkthrough much less engaging when you can level your whole team up while using just one of them. The game is already too easy as it is, it's easy to become too overleveled using the exp share.

I agree the best would be to only get the EXP Share once you beat the game or at least have it as a limited version like it was in the first games and then upgrade it to the new version after you beat the Elite.

Smiley

As someone who used the exp-share in X and Y during the campaign, it was great in the sense I was able to train like 13 pokemon at once and never had then over leveled up until the the victory road, because how big it was but still had a full team about the same level as the elite four.
So if you only use a team of six, it's broken, but really fun if you use more pokemon, It also helps that X and Y regional dex is huge so you have large variety of pokemon to choose.

MetaMario

@Smiley:

So if you only use a team of six, it's broken, but really fun if you use more pokemon, It also helps that X and Y regional dex is huge so you have large variety of pokemon to choose.

This; I started using more than 6 pokemon for my team since White 2, and now I'm tempted to do it more often.

.access timeco.

Yeah, there's that. Since BW, I always start the game already knowing which pokémon I will use in my team, so I never try anything aside from those 6 (in White2 I went to extreme of only using 3…). I like to use just them because it make the team feel more special, I don't know... But obviously the new exp share was not designed with that in mind, they want you to try using as many pokémon as you can.

In my case it would be great for a second playthrough but, you know... only one save slot.

maxterdexter

The thing with the logic of "Play 10 minutes and uninstall" is for games that cost 5$ or less. If you put down 40$ for a ds game, at least 20 hours you got guaranteed.

This is a design flaw that I'm seing with mobile and portable games, they are fundamentaly two very distinct beast, and learning the wrong lessons from eachother.

Jabberwok

@GetsugaZoro:

I believe Masuda has said in a interview they made the game easier because of the current gaming climate where you can just get an app, be bored uninstall and get 30 different ones in just 5 mins, they are making it easier so it goes smoother for people that might be subjective to this and drop the game for that reason.

This is horrible logic. The price of console and handheld games will never be able to compete with cheap apps, so they need to be going in the opposite direction and offering what apps can't. Namely, an engaging and rewarding experience that's based on actual accomplishment.

This is not at all what I'm asking for, but my mind wandered so just for a moment imagine the insanity of a Dark Souls/Pokemon crossover.

Mr. Reloaded

And it's because of this ridiculous logic we probably won't get another full fledge battle facility (like the battle frontiers of Hoenn/Sinnoh) thanks kids..

Green_vs_Red

@Jabberwok:

This is not at all what I'm asking for, but my mind wandered so just for a moment imagine the insanity of a Dark Souls/Pokemon crossover.

…...........How?

Cyan D. Funk

CACNEA used PIN MISSILE!

EEVEE used RO-

CACNEA used PIN MISSILE!

EEVEE died… (-4067790 PokeSouls)

MetaMario

@Mr.:

And it's because of this ridiculous logic we probably won't get another full fledge battle facility (like the battle frontiers of Hoenn/Sinnoh) thanks kids..

That kids would have low of an attention span to seek out the frontier(s) or something?

Mr. Reloaded

@MetaMario:

That kids would have low of an attention span to seek out the frontier(s) or something?

Kinda.

In a interview shortly after ORAS came out Masuda was asked about the exclusion of the Battle Frontier, and he basically said the reason it isn't in is because kids are more into the mobile industry and wouldn't have the patience to really appreciate the facility as a whole.

Something like that.

y2kyle89

@Jabberwok:

This is not at all what I'm asking for, but my mind wandered so just for a moment imagine the insanity of a Dark Souls/Pokemon crossover.

Hekti

Still waiting for a Pokemon/Monster Hunter Crossover

Cyan D. Funk

Pokemon/Metal Gear crossover-Oh wait.

Nekketsu

@Cyan:

X and Y without the Exp. Share on is like a completely different game.

You tell me! I'm currently playing X again, turned the Exp. Share off, and to make it more challenging I just explore each area to the last nook, but I'm not staying around going in circles to grind, just beat the pokemon which ambush me and catch the ones I'm interested in, and then I proceed to the next area. Whenever I get to a gym or face a rival my team is always several levels below.

Recall I did the same thing in my Platinum playthrough. No wonder I ended up with a fairly inferior team when I got to the League.

Green_vs_Red

@Cyan:

Pokemon/Metal Gear crossover-Oh wait.

[qimg]http://i.imgur.com/h8YqHal.png[/qimg]

Oh god the puns.