I was thinking the other day about pokemon and decided that it was quite funny that I'm into competitive pokemon, but I haven't played a game since Diamond and have no desire to play another at any point in the foreseeable future. Even randomising roms and playing through them I dislike, even though it should give me a relatively fresh experience, given that I randomise literally everything. So I was curious to see if many other people were in that position where the pokemon games held no interest to them, but they still really enjoyed playing pokemon competitively? As a general question to everyone, what do you think the shortcomings of the pokemon games are? And how can they be dealt with? The biggest issues for me are the lack of story and the inadequacies of the AI. Together, those flaws turn the game into something that feels like one great big grinding session. I loathe grinding. Lack of story I think needs no elaboration- it's never been a point of emphasis, and I can't see that changing. I don't think the pokemon formula as it stands makes for a compelling story, especially the need to stick to the 8 gym leaders + E4 structure. This would be forgivable if the gameplay was interesting, but the AI is so pathetic that it causes a deep and enjoyable game to break down into a process of picking a pokemon that hits whatever the AI has super effectively and simply selecting that super effective move over and over again until the pokemon dies. The AI doesn't react to what you do in any way at all. Holy shit, I just realised that I might as well spend my time playing the baby game from the Stanley Parable instead. They're so uncomfortably similar Yes, you literally have to spend 4 hours doing that. If the AI doesn't react to anything you do, it's hard for a game to not feel like some endless grinding- beating the AI ceases to matter, because the AI isn't doing anything, it's irrelevant. The only thing that does respond to anything you do is the Exp bar and your pokemon's stats when you level up. Even if the AI were just to switch out of obviously unfavourable matchups, that might improve the game somewhat. Obviously there'd still be a long way to go, but it's an improvement So yeah, that's my rant. What do you guys think?
@Ortheore I completely agree about the AI being about as intelligent as the common cardinal (there is one that smashes into the exact same window at least 6-7 times each spring). Grinding is a insta-win condition, and it sometimes feels like it is the only way to win. The story is lackluster and repetitive. But somehow, I still find a way to enjoy and find replay value in almost every new Pokemon game. First, you have to remember that these games are targeted at 7-11 year olds. The story can't be too complex for young kids to understand. As such, the conversations are one sided. You dont respond to the AI, they dont respond to you. Pokemon games usually run two plotlines. The first plotline is similar to what I call the "standard RPG plotline". Meet Hero, Hero meet bad guys, hero beat up bad guys against all odds, one or more plot twists for randomness, hero saves world (the Fossil Fighters and PMD series come to mind). The second plot is the gyms. The two plots are each used to accelerate the other plot, because no 10 year old in his/her right mind would chase down armed thugs without a damn good reason to do so. One example of this is in Sinnoh, where T-Galactic's effective capture of your rival in Snowpoint forces you to save him, causing you to go to the Snowpoint gym. Stupid plot? Yes. Effective plot? Also yes. Due to the fact that these games are the same and still incredibly easy if you grind, I usually challenge myself to make it harder. This can be anything from a Nuzlocke to a grind-free run (I was 10-12 levels under the E4 in my first play of Y, 6-8 in ORAS). Moreover, It causes me to have to use auctual strategy to beat the bosses. The hardest scenario for me was in LG, where my Blastoise was equal level with the E4 and the rest of my team was 25-40 levels under, but I managed to beat the Champion by abusing my Lv17 Spearow's Fly to avoid Solarbeam spam. The AI is unacceptable, however. in the above situation, Venusaur had Sunny Day on his kit, and that would have ruined my strategy. but did he use it? not until Solarbeam was out of PP and I was switching in Ninetails. Granted, there arent many situations where an improved AI would help said AI defeat me, because their kits suck, but in the few where it does, It is painful to watch them do stupid shit when they have a better move. As for the AI's role in the story? as discussed above, they are talking to 7-year-old you, not teen/adult you. But I agree that GF could add a few more story-shifting AI interactions and fix most of the story issues, as long as it's not one of those cheesy good-guy-is-auctually-evil plot "twists" that are telegraphed at least 30 million times before it happens (i.e. WHAT? HEIDRAGON ISN'T ACTUALLY EVIL? - PMD Gates to Infinity) that the main-series games have avoided pretty well to this date.
Yeah, expecting a quality story is asking a bit much, given that a quality story is something that the vast majority of games struggle with even before you consider the constraints imposed by the gyms/E4 structure and the target audience. It doesn't help that I think a lot of people set a really low benchmark for what makes a game have a good story, that and/or I'm just extremely critical in that regard. On the flipside, it's not as though you can't tell a great story that is pitched at kids, but still holds wide appeal- just look at pretty much any Disney movie. But like I said, I'm not expecting GF to suddenly become master storytellers, I'm just picking up on the fact that the lack of story contributes to a lack of meaning in gameplay. Even challenge runs don't appeal to me, because even then you're only really challenged by the E4 and maybe a few gyms. Any serious challenge posed by a gym is really quite isolated, and the E4 is literally right at the end of the game. That leaves a huge amount of gameplay that is simply monotonous. Now that I think on it, it's really absurd how much harder the E4 is compared to the rest of the game, especially because the level gradient of some of the games is appallingly inadequate *glares angrily at Crystal*. Normally when I play the game I skip every wild battle but battle every trainer. Maybe if I avoided as many trainers as possible the issue would fix itself, but then if your plan to improve play experience is to play the game less, then there's a pretty huge problem that you're kinda ignoring. Maybe when I do challenge runs I should pick harder conditions like idk no Poke Centres, or implement arbitrary level caps or something, but I still can't see myself finding things any more rewarding. Maybe I was wrong to pick on the AI, when I think deep down I just fundamentally don't enjoy playing pokemon. That said, I think there's still a lot of things to look at
I would like to say that the AI is the worst ever. They really need to improve because they just sit there doing nothing. They might sometimes try to use a super effective move but that's about as smart as it gets. I think BW had ok AI but most of the AI used terrible pokemon. However the stories aren't particularly bad in my opinion. BW had a good storyline until the very end where it was all because he wanted to.................. *sigh*............. "take over the world"............. However I still think N was cool. The story of XY is pretty bad until ORAS followed it up with something mind-blowing. This video pretty much explains it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mkm-U7Myh0E&index=15&list=PL35FE5C4B157509C9
I do play the Pokemon Games but once am done playing through I get bored. It is much more playing competitively tbh lol!
This is actually difficult for me to imagine. I'm not saying anything bad here, it's just indicative of a perspective so vastly different from mine. When I judge a video game's story, I expect it to be equally as powerful as any good book or movie- there's no reason a game can't reach that level. I generally think games that have story tacked on solely for the purpose of contextualising the gameplay are a waste, since resources are expended creating that story and I spend my time playing that game, which I almost always consider wasted if it's a single player game without a good story (the exception being Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn). So yeah, that's my perspective, which I suspect will differ from yours. Can't comment on BW/XY tho, since I've never played them and don't really intend to
The only way I can play through the actual games now are nuzlocking through them. It's not even lack of any story so much as the games are just easy unless you impose a challenge on yourself. It has just as much to do with the AI as it does the pokemon and movesets in the games, as well. Mono type gyms make the games pretty damn easy to sweep barring very few exceptions and even the E4 should have some type variety(Oh no, Bruce has an Onyx and not a fighting type? Better KO with Alakazam or Kadabra anyway). There are ways to make games kid friendly without sapping the challenge right out of it and the mainline Pokemon games aren't getting that right.
Ding Ding Ding! Game plots SHOULD be movie-worthy. I will say again that a game like Pokemon should be PG movie-worthy, because 90+% of players are under 13. The pokemon games do have story just to explain the gameplay in the Gyms, but there is the evil team plotline that would match any given movie, except that it always sucks ass. Pokemon likes to think of itself as a multiplayer game that has a single-player story thrown in for no decent reason whatsoever, which is sad. But in watching younger kids (The target audience of this game) play the games, the plot still moves them. My younger sister's 3rd grade class spent plenty of time arguing over the morals of Team Plasma's actions in BW1, only to, as stated by Swanna above, realize it was to take over the world. Hell, I thought about the morals of those actions for at least 15 minutes. Those of us who have more complex thoughts realized within said 15 minutes what Ghetsis' plan was, but the 9-10 year olds were still so shocked that N rampaged through the Pokemon League and that Ghetsis wanted to take over the world. To reiterate, I agree the plot of the pokemon games are terribad, but they do their job of supporting a Multiplayer experience while being entertaining to the target audience. As far as FE is concerned, I can't comment on Radiant Dawn, but Awakening had a perfectly good plot for my liking. It managed to hide the plot result better than most games I have played with that one big plot twist that everyone sees coming. SPOILER ALERT (Highlight to view): Your character is the bad guy's kid. Also, BW had the best plot of any pokemon game and you really should play it :P The AI is worse than the AI in Fossil Fighters. Which is terrible btw. The games past BW have also gotten progressively easier, with me completing AS with maybe 3 pre-E4 pokemon knocked out, bar the few times I had to soft reset to beat Norman. A few pokemon died in the E4 because my team was 6-8 levels underlevelled and I used 0 healing items. I generally playthrough once without grinding at all to get a good idea of whats going on and then fuck around (usually a Nuzlocke). BW2 (and maybe BW, I forget) was so kind as to include a challenge mode, which increased the enemy's levels. The problem? It was only available in the post-game to 1 version and not at all in the other bar Infared, and the AI was still aids. If a pokemon game had a challenge mode with increased levels, more enemy team variety, and an AI that pays attention to the game available as an option from the start, I would be much happier. It would have to be well hidden tho, cuz otherwise the 6 year olds would be crying about how hard it is. which is stupid, I know, but the hard truth. also, decent AI is hard to code. I really need to stop playing devil's advocate on every thread I post on, don't I?
Yeah usually I play through each game 3 times Playthrough #1 = Getting to know the new game and seeing the story Playthrough #2 = Usually after playing competitively for a few weeks. I hand pick my team from what was good. Playthrough #3 = Nuzlocke
I personally love battling competitively on the 3DS, especially with some people here and some real life friends. There are actually a lot of people that are at least decent at competitive and can still be found on the PSS with ease. Most players like these have received over 100s of "Nice!"s on the PSS, and battling them is actually quite the thing for me. Though, what really keep me at this are Multi Battles and Free-for-Alls. If you know 3 people that are willing to join you, there's nothing better than that since battle simulators don't offer this either. Hatching eggs or even generating Pokemon can be tedious but are worth the time if you play competitively on your 3DS. The AI level has improved in Generation 6, I'll give them that. Multiple times, the game has tried to predict my move (like switching out from Aggron into Claydol while predicting a Ground type move) and they're clearly not raising the AI level because of the kids. Though, I don't think it's going to be good enough to outsmart us anytime soon, as least not during the main plot. We still have the battle facilities but only if they added more of those in the more recent games, they could have been much better. As far as the story of the game is concerned, I'm actually fine with it. Game Freak is clearly making an effort to add more spice to the story in the recent games and I feel that we should appreciate that. In their latest games as of now, Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, they have given all the Magma and Aqua admins their own personality and also made adjustments to the main plot. They've even sorted out the issue of, "Why do Megas not exist in the original RSE games but do in the remakes?" by introducing the idea of multiverse into Pokemon. They're working on filling the plot holes and are trying to make the games more enjoyable by adding new features like Pokemon Ami, even if you and I aren't using it. It's still something! Asking them to change the 8 Gym Leaders and 4 Elite Four members will be too much. They want the money and their current "formula" is working for them, so why would they risk any of that? It would be completely illogical for them to try any of that in the main series games. It all comes down to your personal opinion, so I'll leave this here.
You have no idea how much I want 2v2 battles on PO. I worked myself into a pretty reliable team for friendly competition without too much stress, but GF was so kind as to disallow it in Random Battle because it has Hyper Voice M-Garde (Gen 4 exclusive). 4/6 members are IVed, all are EVed. Said team (cant remember last pokemon) went 6-1 against the PAX Pokemon League GLs when I attended PAX East in March. I consider the PSS and GTS very scary places, with lots of hackers and scammers everywhere (I got a hacked Palkia for a Chimchar in Diamond, it was great). Back on the mention of PAX earlier, a convention like that is a great meetup place for people who know what their doing and/or learning o meet up and have some fun battles. The Nintendo sponsored Play Pokemon! events are also fabulous places to find others to do combat with, as I learned during my TCG phase. One of my most memorable battles was infact a multi-battle at said Pokemon League. But alas, this is back from when Platinum was the most recent main series game. Sweet, sweet memories. Fuck Stephen predicting every goddamn one of my M-Gallade Close Combats. The AI did improve in gen 6, but it appeared to only bother using the new AI in boss battles. Hell, even the GLs can't us logic. I beat Norman with just my Shedinja and Marshtomp by just switching Shed into the normal attacks and letting Marshtomp take the feint attacks. After the 4th time, any normal human would have used another Feint attack as I switched in Sheddy, but nope. You do bring up a good point about the post-game areas. When we get our Battle Frontier in Delta Emerald and/or Z, I do hope they can input some strong AI in the later battles at least. The Battle Chateau is boring as hell, and they showed the tower in ORAS. GF please. The story has it's ups and downs. The Gym system is a pure plot advancement system, and it works just fine. Granted the gyms are stupid easy, but they do work at advancing the "Bad Guy" plot and vice versa. It is a system that does work and I have personally seen other games directly rip off (Hai again Fossil Fighters). Ah, almost forgot about the Delta Episode. The multiverse theory is great and all, but seriously overused. I mean, EVERYONE is using that theory to explain shit they can't otherwise explain like everything Marvel does and why Peach was alive at the end of Super Mario Galaxy despite being almost directly stated to be horribly dead in the main plot. Pokemon Amie's usefulness includes evolving Sylveon and obtaining bonus hax ingame, and just about nothing else. I used it a good bit in my Y nuzlocke to evolve Eevee and save Meowstic's ass more than once. The Contests on the other hand, are awesome until you beat all of them with a Bronzong. Even then, It is fun to watch a Muk winning a Beauty contest. The dress-up system in XY was the one thing I was really sad about losing in ORAS, but I understand it on account that we want the ORAS characters to match the RSE characters. It needs to return in Z without question. WE ARE GETTING 1-2 MORE GAMES THIS GENERATION, PEOPLE!!! Tl;dr: I appreciate what GF has done, but it NEEDS to make a decent AI and fast. EDIT: If you really want to go in depth here, watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mkm-U7Myh0E
I feel you Ortheore.Pokémon games are darn boring after you've beaten a couple. These guys hardly invent anything that makes the games themselves more fun. Poke park,2.5 d graphics and such may have been interesting add ons but that's not really something that genuinely makes the games more fun when the plot most always remains the same with interchanged characters and 6 years old friendly gyms. There are tons of interesting GBA titles out there and Pokémon isn't very high on my list.