Pokémon Thread XXVIII: Get. In. The. BAG.

[Lord Raziere]

I mean, personally I want a Pokemon game that doesn't have a villainous organization, it's just the League, exploration, and some sidequests.

Ah, so the villain is a personal one then? Like a trainer or rival gone bad? Because otherwise its just a bunch of people having fun battling, and where is the story in that? It can work, but you have to give the trainers themselves varying degrees of morality. I can see a wild west set up where while there is no villainous organization, there are tons of trainers who are basically outlaws who get away with things because they have strong pokemon and they don't really form anything, they are just one legendary thief or raider or another that you face off because your like one of the good trainers, with maybe a few of them forming little gangs of three or four badasses at most. and you mostly just foil personal little stuff.

Could be another place where the League is just being set up and you have to become champion to stabilize the region and bring law and order to it.

[Qwertystop]

Ah, so the villain is a personal one then? Like a trainer or rival gone bad? Because otherwise its just a bunch of people having fun battling, and where is the story in that? It can work, but you have to give the trainers themselves varying degrees of morality. I can see a wild west set up where while there is no villainous organization, there are tons of trainers who are basically outlaws who get away with things because they have strong pokemon and they don't really form anything, they are just one legendary thief or raider or another that you face off because your like one of the good trainers, with maybe a few of them forming little gangs of three or four badasses at most. and you mostly just foil personal little stuff.

Could be another place where the League is just being set up and you have to become champion to stabilize the region and bring law and order to it.

There doesn't need to be a villain. There probably needs to be a challenge, unless they do some really big changes to how the game works, but there doesn't need to be some overarching villain.

See also: RBY, GSC. For most of both of those generations (to my recollection), Team Rocket wasn't relevant. When they did show up, it was a one-off thing, not directly linked to earlier or later things they were doing beyond the fact that it was the same people doing it and it obstructed you somehow. The story was "adventure to defeat the Pokémon League, overcoming whatever challenges are in your way," and a subset of those challenges involved the local Mafia. Taking them down was never a driving goal of the game the way it was in later generations; it just sort of happened.

Teams Aqua, Magma, Galactic, Plasma, and Flare were large parts of the plots of their games. Team Rocket was just a part of the world that was sometimes in your way, the same as Team Skull and the various iterations of Victory Road. Alternately, the same way most of the battles you have aren't with Gym Leaders or your designated rival. Any given encounter with them in RBY could be replaced with a different unnamed unaffiliated group of thugs and crooks, and while something might be lost, the result wouldn't be bizarre and incoherent the way it would be if you did that in RSE, DPPt, BW, or XY. They're not quite that loose in GSC because they have a recurring motive (get Giovanni back) even if you aren't usually paying attention to it, but it wouldn't take too much dialogue shifting to remove that and keep their actions the same.

Game Freak could absolutely do another Pokémon game without any grand villains to thwart. They don't even really need a group of obstructive jerks with silly uniforms and a Team Name, but that's fairly well-established as traditional even in the spin-offs at this point.

TL;DR: You can have enough challenges to fill a game without needing half of them to be run by one person or group.

[gooddragon1]

I have to wonder, why isn't there a pokemon called wuksia yet?

[Rain Dragon]

Finally encountered my first wild Dragonite in PoGO yesterday - and it was nearly max level! Only "decent" appraisal, and Steel Wing/Hurricane for moves (C-rank offensive, B-rank defensive) but it was still higher CP than literally any of my Pokemon, including the Vaporeon I've been maxing out since September.

Gratz! I haven't seen any Dratini or its evolutions in PoGo yet. /sadface
Have fun.

So I finished Moon recently. First Pokemon game I had played since Yellow. The craze over Go got me back into the series and I found myself wanting more after that proved... lacking. Is Black or White worth picking up for the story? Or X/Y? I really can't see access to species of mons unavailable in Moon as reason enough since trade is an option, but if the story is on par with Sun/Moon, then I'd consider it worth it.

I think X/Y are okay. I don't even remember the story well though, but I do remember enjoying parts of it and I liked the overall game. I think Sun/Moon's story (so far. I'm only up to the second island) is stronger. I didn't play B/W, so have no idea what it was like.

[Rynjin]

Moon is the first new Pokemon gen I've played since Emerald was new (unless Heart Gold counts). I like it a lot. It feels weirdly like a Final Fantasy game with Pokemon mechanics.

[Mando Knight]

Is Black or White worth picking up for the story? Or X/Y? I really can't see access to species of mons unavailable in Moon as reason enough since trade is an option, but if the story is on par with Sun/Moon, then I'd consider it worth it.

Generation V (BW, BW2) possibly have the best storylines in the main-series Pokémon games. X/Y is a bit more simplistic in comparison to Gen V or Sun/Moon, but offers some background on Mega Evolution.

[digiman619]

Spoiler: SuMo plot discussion; spoilered just in case

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Is it just me, or did it seem that Lusamine was meant to die? Everything in her final scene was felt like a moment of clarity of dying madwoman. I know that Pokemon has a younger target demographic, but having Gladeon mentioning she survived cheapened the previous scene. Is this a translation thing? did she die in the original Japanese and it got localized into her recovering? Just curious.

[Aotrs Commander]

The spoilering is appreciated, by-the-by, since I am still only half-way through; I've spent most of my assigned Pokémon time since Christmas failing to breed my FRAG-DAMNED SNIVY.

Seriously, you'd think I was breeding for a shiny, or something.

[Lord Raziere]

t.

TL;DR: You can have enough challenges to fill a game without needing half of them to be run by one person or group.

Agreed? I wasn't anything contrary to that? When I said wild west, I meant pokemon trainer criminals working on their own.

they don't need uniforms or anything to make them stand out, they just need to be a bunch of individual trainers who do their own thing and their own thing just so happens to not jive with society, but society can't just make them stop because there are not a group at all, just a bunch of trainers with strong pokemon. They don't need to meet or to have an overarching plan. One just has to run an illegal breeding facility that keeps pokemon confined so that they can sell pokemon for money, another just has to be a single guy who beats up the police and does whatever they want, while another just needs to be a pyro who uses fire pokemon to burn down forests just so he can watch things burn, and so on and so forth. There is plenty of room to explore how trainers can completely abuse their power without needing a Team and a world-breaking goal to come with it. and it would fit completely in, its not as if trainers are inherently good.

[Flickerdart]

Gratz! I haven't seen any Dratini or its evolutions in PoGo yet. /sadface

Seek out Magikarp spawns - the few Dratini (and one Dragonair) I've found tend to spawn there. Dragonite spawns in a completely different biome (mountain).

They've also rebalanced eggs, so Dratini eggs are relatively common.

[Aotrs Commander]

Whelp, at least now the bank's up, I can shunt my Snivys to Moon to wonder trade 'em out (another box and a half of 4 or less IVs to go...)

Not like I'm going to be able to do anything useful today anyway, after I am reminded WHY we (being the royal we) have a rule we stop our CAD work at nine o'clock and do not, in fact press on for another 3/4 hours, even if we're on a roll...

[enderlord99]

I've recently been playing AG on that "Showdown" website... with a team of six Smeargle that don't actually have Moody. My reason for choosing AG Tier was that I can't be an evasion noob in other tiers.

[digiman619]

Was Lusamine supposed to die? Because her final scene plays out like she's dying. Was that a localization thing (i. e., did she die in the original Japanese?), or was it just a "nobody dies in Pokemon" hand wave?

[OracleofWuffing]

Spoiler: Spoilering because Aotrs Commander said that he appreciated the spoiler.

Show

If you talk to Wicke in the postgame, she says Lillie wants to meet Bill in some sort of attempt to cure Lusamine of Nihilego's poisons, so if Lusamine was supposed to die, that exchange also needs to mean something different, too. I mean, resurrecting a dead thing is more of an AZ thing.

[Aotrs Commander]

*tips helmet*

Ta.


I now have three 6 IV Contrary Snivy males now.

I have nearly two boxes of 5-IV in the bank, I-don't-even less than that traded out. - I wonder traded pout two boxes of lesser yesterday alone, and Moon alone must have another box or two from previous. (Plus side, my Alulan dex is coming along with minimal effort on my part. Shame the IV checker is p0st-game innit?)

I got very excited for a minute when I breed a 5-IV all-but-attack female... Until I looked at the ability. Overgrow. Because of course.

I'm not breeding for a frag-damn shiny, for Lichemaster's sake! It should not be taking this long!

Never mind that a break for a quick attempt at breeding a decent female HA squirtle got me nowhere again. (I mean, two, three, something, anything better than the sole one I've managed so far...)

FRAG.

DAMMIT.

RNG.

[Fable Wright]

I'm not breeding for a frag-damn shiny, for Lichemaster's sake! It should not be taking this long!

Inb4 you get a perfect 6-IV shiny female with Overgrow. But how to be fair, with a 5-IV female and a 6-IV male, my napkin math pegs it at around a 0.86% chance for any given child to be what you're looking for. That'd be around a 50% chance to get one perfect 5IV contrary female for every 80 Snivys you pop out. The odds for a regular perfect IV Snivy seem to be substantially higher.

[Aotrs Commander]

Inb4 you get a perfect 6-IV shiny female with Overgrow.

Yeah, I can see that.

But how to be fair, with a 5-IV female and a 6-IV male, my napkin math pegs it at around a 0.86% chance for any given child to be what you're looking for. That'd be around a 50% chance to get one perfect 5IV contrary female for every 80 Snivys you pop out. The odds for a regular perfect IV Snivy seem to be substantially higher.

Depressingly likely, but considering the number I've been chunring out, it's fairly past the point it should be expected. Just dealing with the boxes I did yesterday was about 120-odd (gioven the about four boxes full of stuff I've either acrues or traded away), and I reckon it must be two or three times that at least just on X (where I labouriosly checked the IVs of everything wonder traded and dumped it in my chaff box or living dex/back-up dex).

Still, now I do have three of the buggers, I can certainly afford - and probably really ought to - use one for breeding (I got the older of the recent two, when I was just time-killing before the week RPG session and never gave it a thought).

[TheSummoner]

Re: Breeding stuff

I haven't tested this myself yet, but I had a theory. I've been looking into the Swap Breeding method, as outlined here. Highlights are... A lot of variables are pre-determined. By checking those pre-determined values (using a Magikarp), resetting, and repeating the process, you will get the same results. By switching pokemon used in the breeding process, you can manipulate the results. One of the pre-determined variables is IV inheritance (which IVs come from which parent). Another is the random IV.

My theory:

Save the game. Take a Ditto and a Magikarp that have no perfect IVs. Ideally, none of their IVs should be a perfect match. Breed Magikarps until you get one perfect IV. Because neither parent had any perfect IVs, this is a perfect random IV. Check the inherited IVs to see which came from which parent using the rules outlined in the image I linked above. Reset the game and repeat the process using a better Ditto and parent of whatever species you want. Make sure the 5 inherited IVs are all perfect. You now have a child pokemon with 6 perfect IVs.

Edit: Now, the method is usually used to breed for shinyness, so it doesn't really go into details about getting 6 perfect IV's (it tends to go with 5 being enough, and in most cases it is), but if my understanding of the process is correct, my adaptation of it should work. If you wanted to put in a bit more time, you could also use that same method to guarantee a shiny with 6 perfect Ivs.

[Velaryon]

Spoiler

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Team Skull is absolutely hilarious. Rather than domination or destruction or some other overblown goal, their motivations are much more down to earth. They're a pack of failures and thugs in it only for themselves. They're also idiots, meant to be an obstacle, but overall not meant to be seen as much of a threat. Personal opinion of course, but I love that sort of villain. Guzma himself is more threatening and portrayed as... Well not smart, but smarter than his underlings and able to keep them in line through strength and boldness alone. Recall that in the flashback near the end when he tells you how he tried to catch one of the Ultra Beasts, he didn't use a pokeball - he tried to tackle it. The man has some stones, if nothing else.

Spoiler: Guzma

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I forgot that part of the flashback, but that makes me wonder if he caught his own Pokemon the same way. If he chased down a Wimpod on foot and tackled it to capture it, that's both hilarious and actually pretty impressive.

Spoiler-free thoughts on the Sun/Moon story: I thought it was okay, if simplistic and nothing to write home about. But then that's pretty much what I expect from a Pokemon game. Since I didn't play any games in generations 3-6, I can't compare them there, but I thought Hau was a nice change of pace from the rivals in the early games (though I felt bad for him a few times), and the story was at least something I hadn't seen from a Pokemon game before.

My gripe with the game is the many hundreds of Pokemon that I can't catch in this game. I could understand not making all the legendaries catchable (though they could have events for those), but why can't I catch an Onix? Aipom? Mudkip?

While it's nice that you can port your teams from older games to the current generation with the Pokebank, you shouldn't have to do that in order to get them. I enjoyed the game, but not enough that I want to go back and play all the older ones just to port them over to the current generation. So if I want something that's not catchable in Moon, I have to hope I can get it through trading, and that's lame. There's enough memory in the game to have all these Pokemon in it, with all their move lists and evolution rules and blah blah blah, so there ought to be a way to catch them all, since y'know, that's the stated purpose of the game.

[Qwertystop]

Spoiler: Guzma

Show

I forgot that part of the flashback, but that makes me wonder if he caught his own Pokemon the same way. If he chased down a Wimpod on foot and tackled it to capture it, that's both hilarious and actually pretty impressive.

Spoiler-free thoughts on the Sun/Moon story: I thought it was okay, if simplistic and nothing to write home about. But then that's pretty much what I expect from a Pokemon game. Since I didn't play any games in generations 3-6, I can't compare them there, but I thought Hau was a nice change of pace from the rivals in the early games (though I felt bad for him a few times), and the story was at least something I hadn't seen from a Pokemon game before.

My gripe with the game is the many hundreds of Pokemon that I can't catch in this game. I could understand not making all the legendaries catchable (though they could have events for those), but why can't I catch an Onix? Aipom? Mudkip?

While it's nice that you can port your teams from older games to the current generation with the Pokebank, you shouldn't have to do that in order to get them. I enjoyed the game, but not enough that I want to go back and play all the older ones just to port them over to the current generation. So if I want something that's not catchable in Moon, I have to hope I can get it through trading, and that's lame. There's enough memory in the game to have all these Pokemon in it, with all their move lists and evolution rules and blah blah blah, so there ought to be a way to catch them all, since y'know, that's the stated purpose of the game.

That last is a consistent part of every single Pokémon game except for some of the spinoffs. Trading was intended as a requirement for completion since the very start of the series.

[Spore]

Spoiler: Guzma

Show

I forgot that part of the flashback, but that makes me wonder if he caught his own Pokemon the same way. If he chased down a Wimpod on foot and tackled it to capture it, that's both hilarious and actually pretty impressive.

Spoiler

Show

Consider the facts: Guzma is pretty anti establishment and intentionally picked the weakest Pokemon type as his signature type. His attitude is pretty much : "I'll show them." and he is a sore looser. Considering he probably started with only a Wimpod he had the worst odds of anyone trying the island challenge - and he failed (or gave up, you can't really loose a challenge that doesnt penalize loosing).

Partly this makes me think he chased Wimpod until it was exhausted. But the other more heart warming idea is that both considered themselves loosers and bonded over that. Remember that Pokemon have sentience and can develo psychological disorders.

[Velaryon]

That last is a consistent part of every single Pokémon game except for some of the spinoffs. Trading was intended as a requirement for completion since the very start of the series.

Trading between games (like Sun and Moon) I'm fine with. Sure, it's a shallow marketing ploy, but as you say it's been a thing since the very beginning. But it's important to point out that it was only a handful of Pokemon that were unavailable without a trade (Oddish in Blue, Bellsprout in Red, etc.).

Trading between generations is another beast entirely, especially when it means there are literally hundreds of Pokemon that you can't get in the current games unless you port them over from older generations. I mean, they went to the trouble of coding them into the game so you can use them, so they really should have made it so all non-legendary Pokemon can be caught in at least one of the current generation. Not doing so simply penalizes people who are getting into the series for the first time, or getting back in after a hiatus.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Personally I hate the idea of every new game having to cram all the pokemon from previous generations somewhere into the region.

But then, I also don't know why people play this game competitively, and for those who do there should be a (tournament-legal) method to generate any existing pokemon they want in competitive format.

I don't see how it makes much difference to a collectathon, just collect every pokemon in the generation or game, and maybe look into buying some of the other recent ones. If you haven't bought another one since Johto, your collection gets no sympathy from me.

[Qwertystop]

Trading between games (like Sun and Moon) I'm fine with. Sure, it's a shallow marketing ploy, but as you say it's been a thing since the very beginning. But it's important to point out that it was only a handful of Pokemon that were unavailable without a trade (Oddish in Blue, Bellsprout in Red, etc.).

Trading between generations is another beast entirely, especially when it means there are literally hundreds of Pokemon that you can't get in the current games unless you port them over from older generations. I mean, they went to the trouble of coding them into the game so you can use them, so they really should have made it so all non-legendary Pokemon can be caught in at least one of the current generation. Not doing so simply penalizes people who are getting into the series for the first time, or getting back in after a hiatus.

Fine. Addendum to prior: Since the first point at which there were multiple generations (Gen 2), there's almost always been things unavailable without a cross-generation transfer (with two exceptions). Since Gen 3, there's always been things that needed trading between same-gen games that weren't in a versioned set (usually you need the remakes) if you didn't want to transfer from an older version. In Gen 2, it was starters, fossils, and legendaries. In Gen 3, inter-gen trading was impossible due to hardware issues (and/or lack of creative solutions), but you would still have needed to trade between a record number of different games – Two from RSE, plus both FR and LG, plus both Colosseum and XD (which were on Gamecube). Until all of those were released, things were unavailable. In gen 4, they brought inter-gen trading back, but Gen 3 legends were off the list. In Gen 5... that's the first one where there's non-uniques you can't get without transfer; the lists for each pair of games are long enough that I'm not going to fully cross-filter and list them, but I'm pretty sure most things are still available. Gen 6 actually had everything obtainable again, but not until ORAS came out.

So, history seems to indicate that most if not all species will be available when they add the third Alola version and/or Gen 4 remakes and/or third Shadow Saga game for the Switch (I can hope, all right?). Most likely, if anything remains unavailable, it'll be limited to legendaries and starters from older generations, which are the most likely to require trades anyway.

[TheSummoner]

Spoiler

Show

Consider the facts: Guzma is pretty anti establishment and intentionally picked the weakest Pokemon type as his signature type. His attitude is pretty much : "I'll show them." and he is a sore looser. Considering he probably started with only a Wimpod he had the worst odds of anyone trying the island challenge - and he failed (or gave up, you can't really loose a challenge that doesnt penalize loosing).

Partly this makes me think he chased Wimpod until it was exhausted. But the other more heart warming idea is that both considered themselves loosers and bonded over that. Remember that Pokemon have sentience and can develo psychological disorders.

Spoiler: More Guzma

Show

Did Guzma fail (or give up) on the island challenge though? In his first appearance, he describes himself (and Kukui) as failures who couldn't become captains, not that they couldn't complete the challenge. Bug speciaty or not, the guy is a tough opponent to face and if you visit his house on Route 2, he's got plenty of trophies so there's evidence he was quite skilled even when he was younger.

The backstory for Team Skull is they formed from the survivors of a group who followed one of the Kahunas who provoked the wrath of the island guardians. The grunts themselves all failed the challenge of course, but the fact that he specifically mentions failing to become a captain makes me think Guzma is different. This is all speculation of course, but I'd wager just completing the challenge wasn't enough for him.

Guzma wants to be the biggest and the strongest. The hated boss who beats you down, and beats you down, and never lets up. Destruction in human form. And it's not enough for him to just be the toughest guy around, he wants people to know it. That need for recognition is exactly why he got involved with Lusamine.

---

Re: Poke-availibility

Sun/Moon has 302 out of the total 802. That's plenty. Think of the selection in each game as being the species native to whatever region the game takes place in. You wouldn't take a vacation to Hawaii to see pandas in the wild (even if you could take a vacation to Alola to see Pancham in the wild)

[KillingAScarab]

Seeking an opinion on rules/existentialism here. I just completed a generation one Nuzlocke, but the only one left on my team which wasn't "dead" was a Haunter, which won by using dream eater. Does this mean my trainer is a ghost or a figment of Oak's imagination?

[Velaryon]

Fine. Addendum to prior: Since the first point at which there were multiple generations (Gen 2), there's almost always been things unavailable without a cross-generation transfer (with two exceptions). Since Gen 3, there's always been things that needed trading between same-gen games that weren't in a versioned set (usually you need the remakes) if you didn't want to transfer from an older version. In Gen 2, it was starters, fossils, and legendaries. In Gen 3, inter-gen trading was impossible due to hardware issues (and/or lack of creative solutions), but you would still have needed to trade between a record number of different games – Two from RSE, plus both FR and LG, plus both Colosseum and XD (which were on Gamecube). Until all of those were released, things were unavailable. In gen 4, they brought inter-gen trading back, but Gen 3 legends were off the list. In Gen 5... that's the first one where there's non-uniques you can't get without transfer; the lists for each pair of games are long enough that I'm not going to fully cross-filter and list them, but I'm pretty sure most things are still available. Gen 6 actually had everything obtainable again, but not until ORAS came out.

So, history seems to indicate that most if not all species will be available when they add the third Alola version and/or Gen 4 remakes and/or third Shadow Saga game for the Switch (I can hope, all right?). Most likely, if anything remains unavailable, it'll be limited to legendaries and starters from older generations, which are the most likely to require trades anyway.

Even if it's been that way all along, doesn't mean it needs to continue. There's obviously no technological limitation keeping them from putting them all in the games, so it's clearly just about making it so you have to buy the older games if you want everything.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Even if it's been that way all along, doesn't mean it needs to continue. There's obviously no technological limitation keeping them from putting them all in the games, so it's clearly just about making it so you have to buy the older games if you want everything.

Just collect all the ones in the region. If you want to collect more, buy another game. That's how series work.

[Brandles]

i'm having a ton of trouble beating the elite four in pokemon sun :V it's fricken hard as heckie

[Mando Knight]

i'm having a ton of trouble beating the elite four in pokemon sun :V it's fricken hard as heckie

Bring Solgaleo, something with Fighting moves, something with Electric and/or Rock moves, and something with Dark moves. Then, if you balance out the rest of your team, you should be set for the championship bout as well.

You can also farm hundreds of Leppa Berries fairly easily, so don't be too worried about using low-PP moves.