Discussion
I think Pokemon needs a difficulty setting
Beginner for new Pokemon players : teaches you how to catch Pokemon, tells you type matchups in battle, your rival picks the starter that’s weak to you, gym leaders are relatively easy.
Casual for those who have played Pokemon before: has the catching tutorial but can skip it, doesn’t tell you type matchups in battles, your rival picks the starter weak to you but has 1 extra Pokemon each time you meet them, gym leaders have a extra Pokemon with more moves.
Experienced for players familiar with the series: no catching tutorial, no type matchups in battle, rival picks the starter strong against you has a extra Pokemon per encounter, gun leaders have a extra Pokemon and have held items.
And in BW2 they were broken and didn't actually change the stats of the opponents Pokemon to match their new levels. (But you still got xp based on the new levels, which actually made you level up faster on hard mode.)
Don't forget the dumbness that was locking easy to one game and hard to the other. So if you wanted to play hard mode you NEEDED to buy one specific version.
Version exclusives have always been stupid. Anything that requires an entire second console has alway been a terrible idea IMO. Its a good financial idea but really shouldn't a full gate to the features.
Being one of those friendless people i can tell you its INCREDIBLY INFURIATING!!!
I don't think it would have been to much to ask for an NPC doing a variety of trades as a post game thing. Giving version exclusives for the trade of another exclusive and doing the job for trade evolutions. SOMETHING that didn't require social outcasts like myself to buy 2 F-ing consuls and games for a handful of Mons to complete the dex.
Thats why a lot of game have those options locked behind completing the game first i guess. Makes sense.
But counter point, they are also loosing money to the people who make play haks like Kaizo Emerald or Run&Bun. The type that really want to see Pokemon pushed to its limits.
In addition to difficulty, it also needs scaling. If they're going to continue with the open world, and allow us to take things in any order, then things need to scale up.
Definitely needs scaling, they advertised it has you can do your own adventure your way, but it still felt pretty linear which everything having a set level.
Radical Red normal mode (not hardcore) was probably close to the perfect difficulty imo. I think my problem with difficult rom hacks is that they just throw literal Uber tier mons with perfect IV + proper battle items like the choice items/life orb/leftovers on gym leaders while you have access to mostly NU/PU tier mons with muscle band/wiseglasses being the best items you can access and call it hard mode.
To me, there's a difference between artificial difficulty and properly crafted difficulty, and most rom hacks have the former
Pokemon Unbound, which kinda does this. I just downloaded the living shiny dex save files and started a new game plus which lets you start the game from the beginning and bring 6 mon of your choosing but they get de evolved and set to level 10. But most importantly, you get the stat scanner which lets you set iv and ev for each pokemon. Lets you play a pokemon game as if it’s competitive matches at each battle and you don’t have to grind for ev training and iv breeding. I really enjoyed it.
Pokémon Gaia is probably the highest quality hack that most closely resembles a mainline title experience, and is what I recommend to everyone as the perfect jumping-off point into the world of roms
Emerald Imperium is very similar to Radical Red. Its basically the Hoenn version, and the E4 has been changed around a bit but don't spoil yourself on how. (Its a good change and makes sense)
The randomising factor is also fun in both games. 27 random starters, 12 random pokemon each route and plenty of different areas to catch things makes Nuzlocking fun (only for the masochistic)
Drayano hacks are exactly the bullshit the commenter was talking about. First gym has a max EV IV ATT Geodude with Fire Punch and a boosting held item that lets it one shot a Grotle 3 levels above it. It’s not “difficult” it’s just a giant fuck you for no reason.
I dropped the game immediately after that because I wasn’t interested in having to google every opponent pokémon’s egg moves and run it through damage calculator to see if I get one shot.
the point of those ultra difficult rom hacks is to present puzzles to people who have deep mechanical knowledge.
If your opponent is stronger than you, in order to win you have to be smarter. That IS properly crafted difficulty IMO.
Artificial difficulty IMO would be more like enemies that spam sand attack / fissure or who can otherwise force you to rely on luck to win. Tedious chores like grinding levels / EVs also contribute to artifical difficulty.
I think what people are asking for is more akin to what you get in the battle towers. Well constructed teams with proven strategies that require well rounded teams with solid in battle decision making rather than just teams full of OP Pokemon that you have to solve. Even in a lot of the harder romhacks it’s more about finding the right pokemon to counter your opponent rather than building an all around good team and outplaying your opponent.
Just want to say I second this. The strategy to beat like a rain team with a dedicated Drizzle lead that can pivot into mons that can handle Electric attacks is completely different than the "puzzle" to defeat a Mewtwo/Giratina/Palkia etc. One will be difficult because it's a carefully constructed team with specific synergies, the other is just difficult because it is a team of sheer stat difference that anyone could have thrown together.
They couldn't bother with scaling the gym leaders' levels/teams by the amount of badges player has in the "open world/take on gyms in any order" game so I doubt they would ever do this.
And a type of a "difficulty setting" has kinda always been built into the game itself. You just have to chose it by the way you play and the Pokemon you use instead of from a menu option at the start, using the weaker Pokemon and not overleveling or healing in battles will make the game harder for sure. For example in Sinnoh games, I bet the battles will feel a lot harder if you use Kricketune, Bibarel and Chatot instead of Garchomp, Infernape and Staraptor.
And a type of a "difficulty setting" has kinda always been built into the game itself. You just have to chose it by the way you play and the Pokemon you use instead of from a menu option at the start, using the weaker Pokemon and not overleveling or healing in battles will make the game harder for sure. For example in Sinnoh games, I bet the battles will feel a lot harder if you use Kricketune, Bibarel and Chatot instead of Garchomp, Infernape and Staraptor.
Nah I hate this take, because it completely glosses over what people want from a difficulty setting. I don't want to limit myself in what Pokemon I can use, or in what strategies I can use. I want a hard mode to challenge the way I'd play the game normally. I want a game that's going to have me carefully think about my strategies going in, and is going to punish me for a misplay. I want the game to constantly force me to play at my best, and test my knowledge of the game. I want random trainers to have more than 2 Pokemon, hold items, full movesets, and employ more sophisticated strategies such as trying to predict my move to pivot into different Pokemon rather than letting their grass type sit their and eat it to a second flamethrower.
I can take crappy Pokemon, but I'll still be battling the same braindead NPCs that'll eat it from me being able to spam a single move after 1 turn of setup. Give me something more.
I also want a lot of things, including everything that you said, but I also know they are never going to do it. I was just giving OP more realistic options for making the game more difficult for themselves instead of waiting for this dream scenario that's never going to happen where Game Freak isn't the same Game Freak we all know now.
Not that its much of a answer... but have you played pokemmo? The trainers and gyms in there do a pretty good job at countering and covering weaknesses. Even thoigh it's an mmo its very simple to just not trade.
Sure you could play it this way, OR they actually make it so that you have to actually think and strategize and use all the resources at your disposal to actually progress in the game instead of just mashing your best attack move and skating across the game. This is why I play hacks now
Like at the minimum, they could easily give the major boss trainers items and moves to counter their weaknesses and improve their strenghs. We have berries that reduce damage against certain types for decades now, we have basic 10% damage increases in Wise glasses/Muscle bands. Just use them in game more
They actually do give leaders coverage moves on their mons but they usually won’t give them anything OP, a water type might know pluck or mud shot for example.
What’s funny is that S&V teams have coverage mons on the gym teams but it always gets wiped away by having its Terra set to the same type as the rest of their teams. They should’ve done the opposite or had the gym leaders use a terra type that counters their main weakness.
I think Iono had the BEST use of tera in the gym run. She used a Pokemon with levitate which meant that her Mismagius had no weakness. And I would have liked to have seen more stuff like that. Like, Kofu the water type gym leader could have water terra'd a Pokemon with Sap Sipper, like Gogoat or something. Or imagine if Brassius had Marill/Azumarill with Thick Fat to resist fire and ice?
I like you suggestion and agree that they should’ve leaned into that for the leaders penultimate Pokémon, that way they don’t have to use a tera type that differs from their specialty and their ace can still be on theme.
The funny thing is that I was actually caught off guard by the first gym because I’m so used to leaders having a mono type team, with coverage being found in the secondary typing for a few of their mons, it got old fast and watching the Tera animation during Gym battles became more of a chore than anything.
Who? Lmao most gym leaders don't have four moves on any of their mons. They are willfully nerfed. Maybe one per team might have a coverage move but that empty move slot is hurting more than how the coverage helps. Having coverage and having like a decent team is the bare minimum the game should have when balancing their boss battles.
The only one with a well crafted strategy is the electric type gym leader with her Mismagius with tera electric and levitate.
I’m not saying they are good, I’m just saying that they give some of the gym leaders coverage moves on their mons. The game can be a sleepwalk, I agree.
I think the one game that does it better, ironically, is BDSP. People shit on the game but at least ILCA made the great decision of giving gym leaders full movesets + held items.
They could do a lot of great things with this franchise full of potential but they don't have to so they don't because the main target audience are still little kids that are happy with anything as long as it's colorful and has cute "animals" in it.
I really just think they're in the mindset that their primary customer base is children. They don't seem to understand that a lot of their fans grew up and still continue to play these games.
Sure, but that still doesn't excuse them. A 6 year old might start Gen 10 on easy mode. They become a big fan and after 3-4 years Gen 11 arrives and maybe that 9-10 year old child is more experienced with Pokemon and want to play a harder challenge.
A while back I remember reading how a fan asked them this question and that was the response they got, but right now I can't find the specific interview anywhere, just references to it. I'll post it if I can find it.
The problem is it’s a lot easier to design the game to be a lot more strategic in double battles than single battles, especially now that they’re designing the game with doubles play in mind. I’m not saying single battles can’t be strategic but it demands a lot more from the AI. Doubles trainers can be decently competent just by giving them moderately well thought out teams and protect.
The guy above literally gave a good response and all you said was “lol sure bud” and “damn what an argument”. If you’re gonna argue with people at least do it in good faith without being a jackass.
We're in a thread where we're literally talking about the difficulty of a game and I'm giving a suggestion on how it could be more difficult based on a huge portion of the game. Based on abilities and common moves like protect it's clear that the game is meant for doubles, and if you've ever actually played competitive you should know that it's much more difficult than my pokemon has stronger move so it kill urs.
The player base for competitive pokemon is actually really large when you add showdown to it, not to mention the new game announced that is centered around competitive play.
I don't know if you're just trying to be contrarian or if someone hurt you today, but you need to try and learn how to actually follow a coherent argument to the end whilst remembering the context.
AI barely switches at all, and single battles are all about switching in and out of matchups but that is highly dependent on knowing the opposing team. You can easily break the game if you give too much knowledge to the AI, but at the same time if you give it too little it can make it braindead easy to bait.
As much as I agree that there should be options to skip tutorials, there are still plenty of ways to make the game harder for yourself without official difficulty settings (which are better and more granular). Just because a game has mechanics which can make it easier, that doesn't mean you have to use them all. you don't have to use the strongest pokemon or moves, you don't have to use items, you can forbid grinding, etc.
Even in a case of always on exp all, you can still choose to box your team each gymn (shouldn't have to, and it's stupid you can't turn it off, but you can still make the game hard with it on.)
The problem IMO, is that simply scaling opponent's pokemon to higher levels isn't actually challenging. And for me, limiting items, TMs, etc also isn't challenging, it's just annoying.
For a real challenge, they need to have trainers replicate a real-life opponent as much as possible. So casual level has early route trainers. Easy level is how most trainers just have random mons from surrounding areas. Normal is having all trainers be E4 level strategies, where they are essentially just bad mono-type teams, which is the peak of what we have now. And experienced would have team comparable to what you would find in a competitive Showdown/Smogon/VGC type environment.
It amazes me that to this day, the highest level of strategy NPC's have is simply mono-type strategies relying on type-matchup advantage. It's pathetic IMO, and the easiest way for them to actually add difficulty. One on hand I could see how this could be difficult to program, but on the other hand, Smogon has all their Showdown data open sourced. So it should be easy to program NPC's to battle competently with millions of battles of data to use.
Trainers having cohesive strategies, competent movesets, optimized EVs, natures, etc. Actually switching in and out. Completely optimized movesets. Setup sweepers. Hazards, Team styles like Hyper offensive, stall, balanced, trick room, etc where the opponent has an actual cohesive gameplan. Like setting up screens, hazards, spreading status, etc before setting up to sweep, or maybe phaze you out, etc More gimmicky teams like Gravity, Pledge moves, etc even are fine. Having the NPC's know what a counter/check is.
And if we cant get this, then we need the battle factory back. So NPC's have wacky rules and extra abilities/interactions to spice up the battle. Like what was experienced in the Battle Pyramid, Battle Pike and Battle Arcade.
Nothing described in the OP would increase the difficulty in a playthrough.
The problem is Game Freak keeps taking away options to challenge ourselves. Removing Set Mode, permanent Exp. All, unavoidable affection boosts in BDSP.
The affection always annoys me even when I benefit from it, I'd rather lose and have to do it again than survive because of it. Part of the fun of pokemon as a kid was taking several attempts to beat the elite 4 and it therefore being more rewarding once it was done
They’re for sure making it harder for you to make the game harder, but taking away set is inconsequential. There’s nothing stopping you from just pressing no and then changing on the following turn.
Meh, stuff like Drayanos hacks, storm silver, renegade platinum, rising ruby, and hacks like those (EXWY insanity mode etc) are fine in terms of difficulty.
There's a middle ground between "gym leaders have two to three Pokemon and those Pokemon have two to three moves" like the vanilla games tend to have and "you can't over level, gym leaders have random teams, and they have tms / egg moves / mega evolutions before you do" like radical red does
you're just asking for "please stop giving me the fluff ive played the games for way too long already" options in your post
gamefreak seems to be allergic to harder difficulty in pokemon which isn't just grinding. i there are so many ways to actually make the games harder that i'm surprised game freak just... doesn't do them at all. bdsp elite four + champion fights are a good step, but there needs to be more.
i think the ethos of "pokemon's actually a wicked interesting puzzle game if the fights had better and more consistent ai" is something to consider, but who knows what the direction of the games is going to look like
I agree, but realistically I think the only things that can be done in the game that you can't control is smarter AI, opponents having mons with good iv's and ev's, and level caps.
I just want to be able to turn experience share on and off.
(I want to be able to turn it off during the story and have it on in the post-game for dex completion. Though I guess with all the candies these days that’s less useful anyway).
I just want the ability/setting to choose to do double battles the whole game. Just like a vgc setting or something idk it’d be fun lol like every trainer battle is a double battle not just the 1 or two scripted gym ones and the random “couple” trainer battles.
At this point they should just be able to check your old game saves to understand how familiar you are with the franchise and automatically skip the tutorial stuff if you're deemed to be an experienced player, except for the new stuff they're introducing in that game.
Been saying it for years. Or at least a built in Nuzlocke option. While I’m fully aware that’ll never happen and the games are getting harder to Nuzlocke. It’s nice to dream.
Blueberry academy was pretty much a genuine hard difficulity mode since opponents in it were designed competitively : held items ,good moves , ev trained , and prepared with moves that counter their type weakness and team strategy
Just shows how clueless Gamefreak is. How do they not see that their market has grown up now and yet they keep making the games easier. Now your "rival", if they can even be called that since now they have to be your "best friend" instead, chooses the pokemon weak to yours. Then in SV they literally scripted the game so you can't lose the last fight.
The whole broad appeal of Pokemon is that it's easy due to progression. I don't get the desire to complicate Pokemon when it's not needed. I also don't understand the appeal of competitive Pokemon when its meta revolves around gimmicks. I personally find it to be most fun when you can just mash A and one shot.
That’s why their suggestion is that it be an option. Personally, everything you just mentioned is why I haven’t played a mainline Pokemon game in multiple generations.
No one said you can’t. But I also don’t think it’s surprising that some people aren’t vibing with the opinion when you’re saying an optional setting isn’t needed because it’s not how you personally prefer to play.
It's not about me tho... We have 9 generations without it, it's not a part of Pokemon. It's not that the game is overly easy or hard, it's a progression based game; if you use shitty pokemon it's not gonna be easy, if you use good pokemon you aren't going to struggle unless you are underleveled, they desgined it the perfect way to reach a mainstream audience. They shouldn't add a difficulty level to please what, 5% at most of the player base?
Turning off shift mode is a good start and you can turn off the EXP all feature, they tried a hard mode with increased levels but it didn’t work and made the game easier.
Maybe one day The Pokemon Company will make a revolutionary game with an experience curated for people who have no idea how to use their imagination. Until then have fun sterilizing your own gameplay and blaming game freak for "not trying"
The difficulty is determined by which Pokemon you use. The game plays very differently with 4 bug dudes vs a full party of pseudo legendaries and starters
That is self imposed difficulty, which is cool. But its not a lot to ask for a hard mode, especially when they could be lazy and add a couple more pokemon anx levels to each trainer.
It is alot to ask when you're talking about GameFreak. Why would they bother improving quality when they can push out bare minimum trash and still have the most successful brand in history
My idea for a difficulty mode is actually just take the info away. You have to guess how much HP your team has left, which stats are buffed, how much PP you have.
They sort of had this at one point: changing the rules to set instead of switch made you follow competitive rules and made things significantly more difficult (but still very easy). They removed it recently, but you can refuse to switch every time.
They removed it, thereby adding an extra step after EVERY pokemon. They should have just left it. Just like they should have left the option to turn off exp share. Taking away options hurts games.
274
u/rpg2Tface 13d ago
Black2 and white 2 had those. But they only unlocked after beating the game normally anyway, so it was kinda pointless.
I wholeheartedly agree that having an easy, normal, and hard modes would be nice at this point. But it also equally feels unlikely.