Since it's quite a big feature, I'm making a separated thread for feedback. Post here opinions and issues related to the new Battle System (AKA the one used for League quest). A short explanation about the battle system, copied from the changelog: Spoiler -New Battle System added. It's only used for Gym and Elite Four quests so far. It reproduces some of the actual battle mechanics from the Pokémon games. You bring up to 6 Pokémon, choose 3 for the battle, then each of them receives 3 randomly generated moves every turn. There's no active Pokémon, all Pokémon you picked for the battle are active, but you only pick one to attack (so you can pick any one of the moves from all Pokémon you picked for the battle), similar to Rotation Battles. For now, I'd like to request that feedback like "the opponents are too hard" should be avoided. Please focus on things that would improve the experience before we focus on balance.
(01:35) fitzy: Only feedback so far is (01:35) fitzy: it'd be great if (01:35) fitzy: Registeel | 238 HP | (01:36) fitzy: would be Registeel | 238 HP / Max HP | Also remove the option to throw balls while this quest is running. Rice Edit: Done.
Moves: [D] 110 Power Dragon-type Physical, 6% chance for opponent's Speed -1, 0% chance to flinch --- Nice flinch chance Rice: Will be fixed next update.
(09:36:30) ±Tauros: Star Actor Metrtal's Wartortle fell asleep! (09:36:30) ±Tauros: Star Actor Metrtal's Wartortle wake up! Wake>Woke Rice: Will be fixed next update.
Interesting but weird game. There is a lot of information to take in. You have to preview your opponent and pick 3 mons. Then during the actual battle step, you have 9 moves to pick from with varied effects. That's not even having to consider yet what your opponents are, what their statuses are, what your own statuses are. I want to propose extending the time on all turns, as well as having automatic time warnings (you have x seconds remaining) like Safari Events or Tournaments or Trivia or Mafia do. Even better, eliminate time limits altogether and have no action taken until you submit a move, just like actual NPC battles. This gives you as much time as necessary to think, as well as being able to pause it if an emergency arises. No other player is involved in the Quest, so the only person that would suffer from infinite time would be yourself. I also recommend view-ability, like Arena and Tower. That said, I also would suggest this for Pyr, too. Otherwise, I also recommend against implementing this battle feature in Tower, because that takes forever already. Perhaps in Arena, but I don't know if it's worth it. I definitely do support it in PvP battles because they're not interesting as is. "I am not a timestaller."
Isn't this an indication that the move cannot flinch whatsoever (assuming a normal move has a 6% chance)
No, flinch already defaults to 0% like in the games, so it should simply not display that (or calculate an actual chance). Stalling is not something that only happens to yourself, it can hold other stuff like script updates. I have the ability to watch battles :) On a more serious note, watch has been purposely blocked for League to avoid scouting. Sure, players can just share that information among themselves, but that's actually a good thing. More players interacting is good :) For Pyramid, it needs extra coding so hope for a day I'm not lazy. The new battle system (which I should just call Rotation Battles, because that's pretty much what they are) is not meant to replace the other system. But a PvP version for it is very likely in the future (in fact, most of it is already coded, but not tested at all). BTW, PvP is another reason to keep a time limit for actions. On the time limit topic, one kind of suggestion that I highly welcome would be ideas to make the text easier to read. Like making attack messages shorter, or improving move descriptions. An idea that I had and I may implement sometime is to colorcode the moves' types.
I feel like my Togekiss almost never gets Fairy or Flying attacks, mostly Normal and Psychic. Is that right?
I thought as much. No wonder. Can I assume that cleric mons are more likely to get heal moves as well, or does it only choose from the pool of attacking moves?
That's new system is really funny, however a freeze/sleep is already broken, two is kinda unfair, is there any way to add Sleep and Freeze clause? Rice: Next update.
Color coding proposal: Red: Physical attack Blue: Special attack Yellow: Status Green: Recovery Purple: Stat boosts Orange: Protection This is with the first listed description of the move taken into account. Besides that I like the new battle system, works well so far.
This can work. Even if moves have different properties, their different effects can be coded. One complication I think that can arise is stat boosts vs. status. How do we categorize moves that increase the opponents' stats or decrease your own? What about Haze effects? Should that be green? Also, types should be colour-coded as well. Maybe STAB can be bolded.
Maybe a way of soft-selecting a move? Like /bat A* to make the game select A if the time limit is over, so at least to avoid randomly selecting a truly atrocious option if you find yourself just out of time to make an actual decision.
SPD change to SPE please. I get confused between SDEF and SPD at which is Special Defense currently. Rice: Next update.
I still support my original decision that there should be a warning such as "you have five more seconds to select a move." Ascarotte has an interesting idea though. It selects an option without locking it in. In related news, I've found that if you select a team (or fail the time limit) during team selection, it locks it in and you cannot edit it before the first turn starts. However, if you select a move, you have a few seconds before you can edit your option.
I think that having a 2-hour cooldown is the perfect timeframe. However, I think it should be edited to one of the following: -1 hour cooldown for unsuccessful run -30 minute cooldown for losing on the first round an 1 hour for losing on the second round This makes it less damning when losing to the Gym's weaker NPCs (because you accidentally brought the wrong team or because you were really really bad). It doesn't seem fair to subject challengers to the same waiting period if they fail earlier in the run. Other than throwing a bone to players that had a poor run, it is also not that huge an advantage. In the first week, the 1 hr cooldown was too easy because you could easily do the entire thing in a single day. Moreover, if you lost, you can use intel to edit your team to be better prepared for that specific Gym in the next hour. Therefore, the less intel you have (by losing in early stages), the less OP the intel is and the less significant it is to having a shorter CD. Besides, if you did this without knowing what types the above stages use, it even further retards the significance of the whole "editing your team and retrying fast" gig, as you may be more well-prepared on the lower rounds, but not necessarily on these unknown rounds. It also makes sense from a flavour standpoint, as you shouldn't need to wait for a long time to rechallenge if you combated fewer opponents. As a counterargument, one could say that it is ridiculous to "make it all the way to the final round just to get defeated and sit out for a long time." But either way, I would be proposing to keep the 2 hr for losing on the third round, which is what we have anyway. And I think it still makes sense for flavour. "If you can beat the lower levels consistently, feel free to grind as much as you need. But if you have problems with higher levels, you should take some time away to train." In light of this, I think we should also have a /bat quit command just like in Pyramid, if you think you will not be successful in the round and would rather go back to the main Safari game for Safari activities and to start the cooldown timer. It would also make sense strategically with my above idea if your team took too much damage and you would rather opt out in a lower round for a lower cooldown.
Bug: http://imgur.com/a/OVHgq There are also many weird things with move order, such as Rhyperior moving before Garchomp when both use same prio moves. How are these things determined? Pure RNG or based off the actual stats? The latter seem to be the case, looking at mon HPs, but it's really hard to be sure.
Effect: [Freezes target] But nothing happened! What is this? Isn't that supposed to be a 100% chance? I got hit in the face with a x4 SE because of that. I demand a refund.
I feel like Rice is saying that Protect works like it does in the main games and makes you go first next turn also.
Re: Legibility- Spoiler One of the problems with the otherwise much better-than-the-old-battle-system-that-it's-totally-not-going-to-replace Rotation battles is that each turn is a flood of new information that's hard to process because it's all text that mostly runs together. My suggestions are two: 1. Streamline information from the moves by using as many icons (in place of text) as possible. 2. Make some information retain. For the first, a good place to start is replacing the uncolored type indicators on moves with the icons from one of the games, like this one: http://imgur.com/a/a35QG Otherwise I swear I will someday use a Fighting move on a Gourgeist thinking it's a Flying move >_> It could also help to do something like this: [A] PHYS [105] BURN [35%] FLINCH [6%] [.B] SPEC [60] Special Defense +2 [20%] [C] Recover [39%] Speed +1 [10%] Other Attack -3 [50%] To the second point, which could also help gameplay on a strategic level as well, let two moves from the previous round retain and only replace the oldest move on each Pokémon's set. So next turn, the previous moveset might look like: [A] SPEC [45] SLEEP [60%] [.B] PHYS [105] BURN [35%] FLINCH [6%] [C] SPEC [60] Special Defense +2 [20%] Yeah, I looked into the code to see if this would be an easy change, and it looks like it would be a pain, but I would argue it would be well worth it. Gameplay wise, it's a pain to learn 9 new moves every turn with all their dynamic effects. From a strategic standpoint, it would be rewarding to have moves remain in your arsenal for a while. From a casual standpoint, it would just be less stressful to keep track of. Also in PvP, this can create mindgames (They used a 120 Fire move 2 turns ago, do they still have it??). Both of those suggestions are probably annoying hard to implement lol Gameplay Features- Spoiler First suggestion is aesthetic mostly, and it ties into the above section. Non-damaging moves should have types too. Why don't they? If type icons are added, it will be important to have a type assigned to each move to help keep track of it. Additionally, this can mean immunities can come into play for non-damaging status moves. My main suggestion, which is of course complicating the relatively simple setup, is to give Pokémon more variation based on their movesets - and also less. Sunny Day and Rain Dance shouldn't let Pokémon use 120 BP Fire/Water moves lol. Make sure moves have BP before counting them towards a type. I think it's important that the offensive capabilities of a Pokémon reflect their actual damaging coverage. Could manually add Grass Knot, Gyro Ball, Low Kick, Dragon Rage maybe. But further variation is possible. Why not give Pokémon more general roles based on their movesets? Below are some ideas. High Damage Output / Recoil: Give a chance for Pokémon to have a +30~+50 damage to an attack proportional to its amount of moves with BP of 100+. Something like, n% if n>5 for n= number of moves with 100+ BP. Suddenly, you have a glass cannon role-type. Blaziken, with 18 moves in triple digit BP, gets a 18% chance to get a move with a really strong attack with recoil proportional to damage output. It's not always a good thing since the recoil hurts, but mons with more defensive movesets (Aegislash etc) won't even get this option. Healing / Wishing Recovery should be much more likely obtainable if a Pokémon actually gets at least one recovery move (Recover, Roost, etc). Then incrementally for each extra it gets. Not having recovery moves should make the restore option more rare and perhaps less effective. Mons with none of them should get at best 25%~33%, with mons that actually get Recovery getting a better range 30%~50% and also more likely to get Recovery moves. At that expense, adding Wish-type moves for Pokémon that get Wish, Milk Drink, Softboiled, Aromatherapy, etc would compliment that well. Then we'd have Pokémon that can perform cleric roles for their offensive teammates. Protection Reflect / Light Screen-like moves could be made available to mons that get a lot of blocking moves. Could also make Protect more likely to come up. Priority / Evasion / Speed Not sure what to do with this category of moves, but some set of like Extremespeed / other priority / Aerial Ace / Detect etc could be used to make the speed stat of Pokémon more useful in battle (currently it's not a large factor I think). One idea is temporary evasion. Like "If you use this move you have a 50% chance to evade your opponent's attack this turn" making it only useful if you have higher speed. As a secondary effect, this would make for hit-and-run type Pokémon that have lots of speed-related moves. This low-key counters hard hitters with recoil (could even make recoil factor in even if the move is evaded!) but isn't necessarily good vs mons that can recover faster than they can output damage. Lucario has a good stat here. Status moves having likelihood proportional to the moves that Pokémon learns which causes them would be cool too, but at that point you're running so many .contains() that it's going to muck up the code.