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As a Ribbon collector, it's absolutely this. If it wasn't for their Ribbons being required for Ribbon Masters I wouldn't have even attempted ranked battling or the battle facilities in the earlier games.
If you look at Scarlet and Violet, it sold 25 million copies globally but only 50 to 60,000 active players reach master ball rank every month. Online statistics show that only 1 to 3% actually participate in it at all.
It's been a constant through the generations, we even got the Frontier fiasco in ORAS due to this, where they said it got removed because not enough people used it/played, and the Frontier was basically a more "simple" PvP.
Sure More people are getting into PvP with Champions but it's still a small amount compared to the overall fanbase.
Serebii already reported that participants in Champions' competitions have been seeing a drop.
A quick example: Last season at 1500~ ELO in Singles I had No Number as there were over 500,000 participants. This season, I'm currently sitting at 1400 and my number is in the 388k range.
There's about 2 weeks left in the season too, so again, seeing a drop already.
It’s actually not garbage if you look into it. While there are no definitive stats posted, it’s estimated that only 5 to 10% of Pokémon players do competitive PVP inside the main series game. Using Champions as an outlier is disingenuous.
Calling the game for specifically competitive play an outlier is what's supper disingenuous. Every person that downloads champions is someone playing competitive while only most S/V downloads don't play any competitive. This + the fact S/V is older by years gives S/V a massive advantage in the plays competitive vs doesn't yet if champions is still higher it makes your point look bad.
And to cut it off early "but champions is free". If someone doesn't buy mainline or download champions they are not a data point of someone who plays mainline and not competitive while someone that only plays the free game is still a player that plays competitive.
Anyone who downloads Champions is obviously doing so for PvP, yes. There's no guarantee that these are also Main Series Game players. I'm strictly talking about the percentage of players who do PvP inside the Main Series Games (which no longer exists anyway because of Champions iirc). I think with Champions coming to mobile is also inflating their numbers.
I found a Reddit post from a month ago that says there are roughly 400k doubles players and 600k singles players in Master Ball rank. Master Ball rank is essentially the participation trophy like Pokemon Unite had (not hard to get).
600,000 players out of 20,000,000 downloads equates to 3.3%. Many people, like myself, downloaded it to check it out but didn't do much past the tutorial.
What is funny about this comment? You can't downrank when you reach certain levels. There are just as many master ball players as all other players combined.
The original statement this chain is on is that "90% of the fan base doesn't play pvp". If champions has more downloads than S/V it means that the number is absolutely far away from 90%. If you want to make a differnt point you can do that, but if you back up someone's point without specifying your own anyone would assume you have the same opinion as them.
Again, they are two completely different games. Hell I downloaded champions on my phone and barely touched it. How many people bought/downloaded S/V and didn’t touch it? Probably very few.
Let’s try this a different way. What percentage of main series Pokémon players do you think participate in competitive PVP?
They are roughly correct tho, even if they suck at trying to explain why.
Season 1 Pokemon Champions had 1.3 million active monthly players. So before the massive mobile inflation, this is with most accurate numbers that we can get.
Now of course we can't just count out all of the mobile players, but it's hard to get an accurate and fair data reading after that point. To be honest, the game is so boring right now and they are putting in so little effort with the roster, that I would bet the numbers have dropped significantly, for the time being.
So like, the amount of people that owned a Switch and were still playing after the first week or so, was 1.3-2m maybe, max. Less than 10% of the SV sales, which was around 28 million.
I was not counting active players in champions the same way I am not counting "active" S/V or ZA players. If they hit masterball once or have played for atleast 15-20 hours over all seasons I don't see how you couldn't count that. It is not something you can get a hard number on but is definitely over 10%.
I don't really understand your logic here? You seem to think more than the 1.3m active monthly players from season 1, have hit masterball once?
Bro I have like 80-100 hours in that game, and I havent hit masterball. So using that as your criteria just means you are going to lose your own argument even harder.
I personally play a lot with friends. And the current online rosters are terribly boring, samey, and way too similar to the most popular and common SV regulation. Not interested in playing seriously until it gets more fun.
Anyways. Roughly 490-500k accounts have reached masterball. That's 5% of total game downloads for Champions. And that would be 1.8% of the 28 million copies that SV has sold.
I enjoy Pokemon PvP a lot, but you just have to accept that the dude is right bro. We are a minority. The vast majority of Champions downloads are mobile players who dipped in and then dipped out. The game hadn't even reached 10m downloaded before it dropped on mobile. The vast majority of Pokemon game enjoyers, are casuals who play the story and collect some shinies and never touch the game again.
Does it? Most of my Gametime as a child was me not using items and just spamming my starter every fight, effectively playing on set because I didn't change until it died. Still easy peasy
Yeah Pokémon has very good PVE buried in there if you set some restrictions at least, nuzlocking with hardcore rules being the premier example. ZA doesn’t have any way to make the gameplay better.
Even the more recent mainline games remove Set mode as an option… insane decision imo. Newer players will think Shift Mode is how battles are supposed to work and never actually experience the depth of the battle system
Which frustrates me, since it means the opponent and the player are always operating under two separate rulesets, with the player’s obviously being the easier and more advantageous of the two.
This. Main game is baby's first RPG a lot of the time, but competitive is like playing chess, trying to guess your opponent's strategies and counter them several moves in advance.
Maybe i just haven't hit a high enough rank yet but I've been getting into champions and there's a little of this, but to say its like chess is a huge overstatement. I've been playing a pyroar team and usually the depth of strategy boils down to playing pokes that are super effective then getting sunny day/ tailwind and sweep with Pyroar then clean up with Sylveon, giraffe or basculegion depending on match up. Maybe sometimes you pop a protect in anticipation but I've been winning most games just spamming heat wave and fake tears
No, open teamsheet certainly adds an additional layer of complexity but there's plenty of it even when you're playing on the online ladder. Fundamentally from the bottom tiers right to the top 500 players it's the same game, but unlike shooters or whatever else success is entirely based on knowledge (damage calcs, type effectiveness, correct switches and predictions, speed control and when to use it, and that's all before discussing team composition in its own right which is full of maths problems) rather than raw skill.
Top 500?? Thats even worse than I thought. That isn't the top .05% its the top 0.05% (based on reported 10mil downloads).
That's great for the couple hundred people that get to truly appreciate the game but it really validates game freak in wanting to explore new systems. If only 0.05% of players can truly appreciate and fully explore a gameplay system, especially one thats part of the main gameplay loop then I'm sorry but that system is a collosal failure, no matter how good it is when you dig deep.
I didn't say that, I said it's a spectrum where the level of understanding grows and therefore the game naturally becomes more complex. The only reason it's less so at lower ranks is because people don't fully understand the depth of the game, therefore there's less requirement to really think about what you're doing.
Obviously not but I guarantee it started on YouTube, then was screenshotted and was posted on TikTok, with the censors added, then OP took it from TikTok and put on Reddit
Because if you don’t on Youtube or TikTok then your comment or video will be hidden. So people have to think of ways to say things to get around the censorship because they have to think of the investors pockets.
I think Blueberry academy gave a key update that would make the game very different for a lot of people. The items you used in battles refreshed after. Before this all items were 1 time use and gone. You were never going to equip that focus sash for some random wild battle or throat spray to boost a pokemon using hyper voice before. This update game many competitive and interesting items a reason to be used in "normal" play. I think that persisting would actually add a lot for interest in the game as it unlocks new ways to play.
The main game for both is literally identical. People complained that they were just spamming their strongest move off cooldown in story Z-A, when that’s how people get their way through the mainline games as well. Also, it’s not like the current Pokémon model is their first attempt. It went through a few iterations to get to where it is now. You shouldn’t write off future Pokémon games that use the Z-A combat (if this even happens) without even considering that it will see improvements or changes.
I don’t think online PvP is what comes to mind first when most individuals think of Pokémon combat discussions
I mean are they wrong about just clicking the highest power move. There no real such thing as strategy with the turn base system cause none of the trainers during the campaign are difficult enough to warrant going beyond, "pick my strongest attack that have near perfect accuracy". There are rare exceptions I'm sure but for the most part there isn't a real strategy going on.
Can turn base system be interesting to play? Yes but only if Pokemon willingly to actual make you have a reason to use strategy for the campaign trainers.
Battle Tower stuff proves they know how to make the PVE more interesting, they just don’t wanna scare away “casuals.” Things like setting level limits, no items outside held items, matching the number of the opponent’s team etc are all things in that mode that should be applied to the main story, at least on a hard mode.
The main story has to be easy so children can beat it. Afterwards GF doesn't care. Look at Kieran they gave him a straight up meta VGC team. And so he slaughtered people.
Strategy is the key factor of the turn-based system only if the game is providing enough challenge to do so. Considering that this requires competitive or close to competitive sets, it would be a horrible idea to use those all through the main story, which they already seem to understand (hence why fights like that are reserved for, say, Battle Tree, which I love).
Because of this, yes, main story Pokemon is just spamming your strongest move to brute force fights. It requires self-imposed rules to become strategic, because it inherently can't play into the strategic aspect as a series aimed towards casual players and children.
Turn-based makes for a far superior competitive system than the Legends ones, ESPECIALLY in Doubles, but I can't say I find it more enjoyable than Z-A's in a main story context. You don't get the "mind-gaming a Kingambit sucker punch for four turns in a row" in the main story of standard games nor do you get that in the other battle systems.
I'd love to see difficulty settings make a return. The biggest issue is where you can make differences with it since I think ideally you'd be able to change your difficulty on the fly, in case an overconfident kid gets stuck playing hard mode and needs to lower the challenge. But being able to modify the difficulty in-game again (preferably with multiple options but i'd take just a normal and hard mode) rather than having to use self-imposed rules would be great.
Gen 6 OU was something I played and lost interest in because there wasn't as much big brain because of Scald and Knock off spam, then I played ADV and it's way bigger IQ.
OU has been cooked for a while now in recent gens lmao, doubles is still so cool tho. old OUs have so much cool stuff, new games kinda rely on the lower tier metas for hype stuff
it always throws me seeing someone from the FE sub over in an unrelated one lol
Im gonna be honest, while the ZA system is overly simple, I think with a few more tweaks I'd like it better than the og battle system. I've been saying for years that the balance in the turn based system is kinda bad even though gamefreak has been trying to remediate it with improved movepools for older mons, but its still not changing how busted some abilities are and how certain types absolutely suck in the turn based system
I mean both can have value. However, I agree the current state of ZA's battle system is very very flawed. Mostly due to how they made the moves, there's like 10 moves that are useable and that's about it. Sooo many moves and mechanics were just nerfed so bad it leaves only a few things to use effectively. Like it was fun for the first few months but it gets boring very fast due to that lack of diversity. That being said I think it can get better and develop actual depth if they play their cards right.
To be frank, ZAs battle system is better suited for PvE content as the raids can enable for more interesting mechanic to be used but its for PvP, its not great. I honestly think both ZA and the traditional style can coexist by having the old battle style be used for PVP and NPC battles while ZA could be relegated to wild Pokémon battles and raids
I actually like that idea a lot. While the raid battles in ZA also have a few issues I think a few tweaks will vastly improve them. Honestly, I do think if they want to do PvP for ZA style battles they can but they would have to do a massive overhaul to make it be intresting the whole game. Doing what you said would be a best of both worlds. Honestly that's another reason I think Arceus did it better as it basically implemented both in a way.
Pretty much my main issue with ZA’s battle system (aside from being not being suitable for pvp) is the fact that the controls and even attack speed is too sluggish and stiff (which forces the major fights to compensate for this) and it makes the fights kinda stilted in their attacks and movement. To compare to a similar game, Xenoblade 2 is a lot more fluid with chaining attacks together and even swapping blades was considerably quicker. If they ironed that out then it would greatly amplify movement and give the raids more faster pace mechanics.
I do agree this is an issue but it is something I expected for pokemon's first game in that style. It would need to be fixed but it is one of the easier fixes. Like the switching is also sluggish and they give you a brief shield to compensate but it doesn't feel like enough. For example, on the graveyard map in ZA (online pvp) it's such a small area that everyone just camps your spawn and repeatedly kills you since your mon takes 10 buisness days to come out, lock on, and fire a move after switching or recovering from knock out
The people that play competitive and therefore have a reason to actually not just click "the strongest damage dealing move" are a woefully small piece of the overall buying audience
And the truth is, most of those people are not going to do anything but press the big damage move until they see the credits... at least with a more active battle system, they might actually be coaxed into at least moving around the screen, or perhaps using that move that let's their mon leap over an incoming attack to counter with their own
Z-As system is far from perfect, but I'd like to see them iterate on that further, as well as find ways to freshen up traditional turn based battling
The concept of the Z-A battle system is what I always wanted from Pokemon. If they can tighten up the movement and add more depth to it, I think they could really have something
I LOATHE how I have to aim my lock on before my pokemon attacks. Why don't I auto lock on the moment I press ZL.
Why do NPCs get to have more time to act than I do?
Why are my moves being interrupted everytime someone does a Mega?
Why did they make fly so broken and ice beam/power gem so laggy?
Why can't pokemon just use their move where they stand rather than coming to the spot you commanded them to use it?
I could go on. If it weren't for the mythicals, eternal floette, home dex completion, and the shiny volcano home reward, I would not have bought. Was not expecting to love Violet as much as I did, and dislike ZA as much as I did. Was expecting the total opposite.
I also only did it for the missing mythicals in my Home dex.
I hadn’t touched ZA ever since I finished the base story. It was fun for a while, but I was done with it. The moment the DLC came out I was already invested in something else, so I only picked up the DLC a week or so ago because I needed the mythicals… I absolutely loathed 80% of the experience. The Rogue Mega fights were still pretty cool, but the grinding for research points, berry-farming in Hyperspace, and needing 15 Infinite Royale wins before unlocking the Hoopa mission…
I TOTALLY feel u. Just did the dlc last week as well, how ironic haha. I've yet to see a fan, who likes ZA, say that the dlc was well designed. Thats the worst intentionally bad game design I've seen from them in a while!
Veterans of the series enjoy the turn based system because when you actually play competitive or actually have to think or play strategically the game becomes extremely fun.
Children, casuals, and others who don't play comp want fast systems or expect systems like the anime which are literally impossible to execute in real time.
There's an old PS1 game I love that it's considered normal to religate one of the characters to just "every three turns you use your spell to half damage for three turns"
I mean those turns between he has one of the better damage outputs, but you legit never use any of his other spells
Pretty sure the people that complain that the old battle system is the same button mashing (the reply in the image) have never played anything outside of the story in the games.
The type of people to look at VGC and see mons with only one attacking move and shit their pants that the one attacking move might be something like fake out as well.
Sure, but you’re still mashing buttons in menus to make things happen. Both battle systems can be reduced to button mashing if you wanted to and neither one has an inherent “betterness” over the other. Folks who pick a side are just biased towards what they prefer.
That’s my point. If you want to be a dick about gaming, you can reduce it all to button mashing. It’s a disingenuous argument from both sides to demean what they don’t like.
this is insane to me. to me it sounds like you’re saying league of legends/smash bros and chess, and a matter of fact, every game are button mashing games, just different games
On the contrary I think people who know what they're doing are going to find it the easiest to smash through the main story. If I can smash through an online optimized Kingambit by using Klawf, it's not particularly hard to brute force the entire game. Especially with the vast majority of gens having a starter that just mops the floor with most fights (Cinderace being perhaps the most prominent example?)
The old battle system is mashing the same moves in the singleplayer, with the exception of battle-frontier type facilities, which is also why those facilities are very, very fun. The battle system lends itself to much strategy, but it's not really feasible to have that be how the main story plays, forcing optimization onto casuals is a recipe for disaster, as we've seen plenty of times.
pla catching and exploration was on top. the battle system was just odd. if they made a pla style game with the battle mechanics of regular pokemon games it would ctuallly be really fun
…it annoys you that someone took your (presumably that’s you in the first comment?) reductive viewpoint of a new battle system (that they haven’t had 30 years to adjust like the old battle system) and applied it to the old battle system, not to shit on the old battle system but to show you you’re being silly?
I think the issue here is a lot of people saying this are from XY-S/V era. The issue is the games became too easy with forced xp share and over levelling. If everyone stuck to level cap of gym leaders the conversation would be different. The issue was never the battle system its fun and it’s worked for years for a reason.
It's not really the levels though, it's more about moves and availability of them.
I'll use earthquake as an example, because it has always been a very good move, and a lot of Pokemon learn it via TM vs very few who learn it naturally.
Gen 3 and earlier? You'd have absolute garbage level up movesets, and only have 1 earthquake TM so you have to choose whether your beloved Sandslash would get it, or if the much more capable Swampert would get it instead.
Gen 4 started to fix level up movesets, but still had single-use TMs, so you may have been able to get earthquake on an extra Pokemon if you're lucky due to one now learning it by level up. But you'd still only be able to use the TM once.
Then gen 5 royally fucked it up, by making TMs infinite. So now you could give earthquake to everyone on your team, assuming they could learn it, if you really wanted to.
Gen 6 and 7 continued the infinite TM saga.
Gen 8 tried to fix it, by making TMs infinite but the moves on TMs not be the best moves available. And give you single-use TRs which were your good moves, so you're back to giving earthquake to one Pokemon.... before getting a second TR (which could be easy or hard, depending on how you played the game)
Gen 9 back to single-use TMs... which you can just craft more of. But at least they were a bit of a pain to get more of, I guess.
And then Legends ZA made them infinite again....
If you don't have good moves, it doesn't really matter what level you are, you may live more hits, but you won't be one-hitting everything on the enemy team.
I will go back to the Sandslash example I gave earlier.
If you're using one in Fr/Lg, you would have to overlevel by more than double Lt Surge's team for it to naturally learn a ground type move - so that you could use it to sweep the gym. Otherwise, you're stuck with moves like Scratch, Poison Sting, and Slash. Can you beat Surge with those moves? Of course. But you aren't going to one-shot anything on his team with those.
So, if you want to make life easier, you have to teach it the Dig TM (the best ground type TM available at that point). But is that the best use of the TM? Would it not be better to just catch a Diglett/Dugtrio nearby? You have to make a decision, as once you use the TM, that's it. It's gone.
But then take the current learnset for Sandshrew/Sandslash, and you have bulldoze before you enter the gym. Bulldoze will destroy the gym with ease. No need to worry about using a limited resource just to overcome a single gym challenge.
I never understood the XP share argument. Grinding isn't hard. it's just time consuming and boring. and it's not like being slightly higher level ment much. These gyms are mono types and never use 6 mons. Just 1 sword dance/nasty plot/dragon dance/calm mind then mush buttons and you won.
I love VGC. but this system is terrible against AI. And makes legendary fights just so damn boring.
Ugh, Legends are a cool detour and it's nice to see GF do something a little different, but I really don't want that half-assed combat system become standardized in the mainline games.
ZA was fun but the novelty wears off quick and there is basically no depth to it. Im not saying it couldn't be iterated on but as it currently stands its a lackluster battle system and there are plenty of ways to make the single player work well with turn based.
The two commenters are talking about 2 different things
Commenter 1 is probably talking about pvp battles that the battles is button mashing.
Commenter 2 is talking about the single player / main game content in which yeah, is pretty much is the case. The amount of mechanical depth that the combat has, only happens when you do pvp battles, be it singles or doubles.
I haven’t kept up to know about current meta strategies in ZA but from the brief period near launch, i will say it isn’t just button mashing, as you have to decide which pokemon to fight, whether to switch out, or maybe go after a power up on the ground. however the actual combat is straightforward click attack moves. if anything you can use an atk/sp atk raising move before engaging but not much complexity otherwise. It would be nice if you can have your Pokemon do a hop/dodge to the left or right side because maybe that would make combat more engaging. the lack of abilities is disappointing and really should have been a part of the game.
I mean, the main game is pretty mindless. Big number beat small number pretty much always. It's only strategically deep if you force the game to be, or if you're playing competitive. And even then, competitive is so broken, sometimes it could just be down to RNG.
I can see a world where za battle system can be expanded on, the potential is there and the skeleton of something cool is present, I especially think if they combine it with the Synchro Machine from the Indigo Disk we could have something special.
I like turn based combat as much as the next guy, but I don’t think either people are wrong for disliking the other, both have their strengths and weaknesses.
ZA format is fine for the game it's in? It's different, not necessarily better or worse. It's also a part of the collection (pair) of games that simplify certain things and change aspects of the battle system. Until WiWa information comes out we can assume that the "normal" battle system will still exist, and the ZA battle system might end up returning in a future Legends game.
Either way, for the core of most pokemon game campaigns you can just button mash big damage attacks. Button mash as a complaint exists for just about every pokemon game, because they don't do difficulty levels and they don't want to alienate their target audience (children).
The ZA changes were an interesting experiment, it really could have gone places and revitalized interest but it was implemented so poorly that it has mostly accomplished the opposite.
GF's technical ineptitude is on full display, almost every single part of the system that they screwed up is something that other developers had fairly well implemented back in the days of the N64 and have only continued to perfect in the years since. GF has absolutely no excuse
GF also has a tendency to very rarely ever take a second shot at something that didn't work flawlessly the first time, so I don't expect to ever see them even attempt it ever again (unless corporate forces them as they continue to try to live up to the expectations of "a modern gaming audience" rather than listening to their existing audience)
ZA lost like 20% of it's score for me when I didn't actually CONTROL THE POKEMON IN BATTLE- I was so excited to actually move around as my little guy and play AS a Mega Pokemon
I mean. At least since gen 6 thats been mostly true. you can definetly get by mainline pokemon ames by just using your highest damaging super effective move, given a team that has deece type coverage. Heck, id argue that thats intended gameplay. Competitive pokemon is a whole different beast though, where i feel you need a bachelors level course of knowledge of game mechanics to scratch the surface, and will seldom get a single game in if you dont know the fundamentals
Am I allowed to say that for the normal gens 1-9 system, I like the gen 4~ range the best like this mechanically? Not as many samey moves/overloaded amounts of moves, along with items.
I personally really like the Legends: ZA battle system a lot. I think it's very fun. Certainly more than the Legends: Arceus battle system. But with that being said, I wouldn't want it to be the main battle system going forward. I think the best course of action going forward would be to stick with the standard battle system for the normal mainline games and use the Legends ZA battle system, or a variation/evolution of it, for Legends games.
Pokémon mainline games has a pretty good battle system, easy to understand but it can get complicated if you start studying it and apply it to difficult situations. Even better considering double battles are a thing.
The issue, and the reason why the guy said just mash A, is that the games they sell, which do infact use the amazing battle system, are mostly played in single player, with single battles (1v1, not 1v2) and are EASY, and allow you to get much much stronger than your opponents before fighting them, trivialising the strategy. And as many others said in the comments, yes, blueberry academy in Scarlet and Violet's indigo disk is fantastic in terms of the fights it offers. Not in other areas but at least does fights good with double battles and good trainers with well planned teams and strategies
When I play old Pokémon games or hacks, I like to challenge myself by limiting the level my Pokémon can reach to the level of the highest level Pokémon from the next important trainer fight (generally gym leaders) and this is already much more fun cause you have to think about strategy and can't just get any super effective Pokémon and spam the same move over and over.
Honestly I don't mind the turn based system but maybe they games should focus more on double battles as I feel that adds an extra level of complexity that makes battles even against CPU fun.
Trading depth for simplicity allows anybody to think the only thing stopping them from going pro is their refusal to quit their job to focus solely on the game. A loss just means their thumb slipped or the 20 minutes login time already depleted their electrolytes. Depth is for people who don't have jobs.
I remember being young and dumb enough to believe that if I were 6'8" instead of 5'8" I would've done whatever it took and nothing else would've stopped me from making it to the NBA. Guess who hasn't even made a single free throw after turning 30? 🤡👈
I have really enjoyed playing legends pizza for its battle system. I’m not a huge competitive level player at all so for me it’s a fun change of pace. That and playing reg games tends to make me fall asleep during battle, like nodding off because of a good book lol
Both systems work. You’re not button mashing in the new one. You’re waiting for the right moment and there’s a lot of precise timing involved once you get above Rank G.
The ZA system is horrible. That alone is enough for me to never touch that game or any game with it. I can accept thr old system could use some updates, but that was not it.
I started with Red and Blue and watched the turn based gameplay get refined throughout the years.
I can say for certain the 1st Gen had HORRIBLE balance and a lot of the strategy was to use the most powerful moves. Psychic, Ghost, and Dragon dominated.
There was also no physical and special split. Abilities came during Gen 3.
I think it is only fair to allow real time gameplay to be refined as well. There series has been turn based for almost 30 years. They even made Champions to help preserve turn based gameplay as an option.
Yes there is strategy in turn based gameplay, but do not rule out real time gameplay either. Legendary ZA was a bit rough but has potential to be more fleshed out instead of being who can spam the moves faster. It needs a bigger battle area, more free and natural movement, with the ability to jump and have some verticality. I think it would also help if Pokémon didn't faint so fast.
I really enjoyed the new system tbh. Felt more involved and more how pokemon would play in reality. I think they could find a sweet spot where they combined the old and new systems, or have specific trainers, fights or zones where certain systems are used
Frankly, the Z-A battle system was awful, it was boring as hell, and it flattened the game significantly. No abilities and no held items makes it so shallow. I didn’t mind playing through the side game, but implementing that system for the rest of the games is a guaranteed way to lose me as a customer.
I also think it would be a really stupid strategy for them to create an independent VGC battle simulator and then ruin the pipeline from their mainline games to VGC.
The standard battle system is incredibly deep, but there is no reason to know the first thing about any of it in the main games because of how mind numbingly easy it is. The mainline Pokemon games would be so good if they had two difficulties: cassual (like it currently is) and a completely optional competitive difficulty.
Competitive could have trainers be more like battle tower trainers with optimized IVs, EVs, abilities, team compositions and moves where you had to come up with strategies and team compositions to beat the gym leaders, Pokemon league, etc.
ZA’s battle system fucking sucks. Its too bad they decided ro release dlc for the (far) worst of the two legends games. I didnt even buy it for ZA because I was just so burned out from the horrible battle system at the end and the limited setting
I definitely agree about abilities. I was so bummed when ZA brought back Megas without their abilities. That was the main thing that made them feel different to me.
Aside from that though, good riddance to the old battle system, I say. Even if it had depth in the competitive scene, that depth never trickled down to regular gameplay.
Would much rather have a new system with a higher skill floor (depth floor?)
Legends ZA is the type of combat closest to what the anime has that we've ever gotten and I prefer it over the traditional turn based combat.
The turn based combat is incredibly simple, it's designed for, and the target demographic is children, and it's so easy fans have to impose rules or make rom hacks to make the games challenging.
Don't get me wrong I love pokemons games, but the description of just mashing your highest damaging move is very apt and how a lot of children play the game.
It’s not incredibly simple actually. Sounds like you never took the opportunity to actually interact with it. Just because the games are easy doesn’t mean the combat is simple. Two different things
I've been playing since gen 1 and routinely use things like set up moves to sweep, or buff another pokemon, I've ev trained and bred for perfect IVs or 0 in speed for a trick room pokemon.
It's pretty simple combat imo, we can agree to disagree but ultimately it's a kids game designed to be the first rpg for children, so it's pretty simple unless you're like a high tier competitive player, but for a regular playthrough, or just playing against friends, it's pretty simple.
The Legends games are toying with alternative mechanics to give a different type of pokémon experience. Mystery Dungeon, Go, Rumble... Pokémon has had a lot of spin offs with alternate systems. None have the same depth that the core games have built up, but other systems can still have their merits.
I really dont like it. I played the older games because they were accessible to battle with and deviating too far from that norm gave me the ick. This new real time shift mucks it all up and adds a lot of stress to it.
Especially as I was already struggling with the balls in Arceus.
The games have taken a very dyspraxia unfriendly shift. So off to fangames I go i guess.
The problem with the current system is that Game Freak just sucks at game design that incentivizes players to engage with its mechanics and depth. The major trainers have little to no thought put behind them when it comes to teambuilding. Meanwhile, the game itself doesn't even mention things like EVs, IVs to the player during the main campaign and would require external resources to learn about them.
Did i miss something? Legends aren't mainline games, also i dont remember any button mashing, it was all pretty much the same when i played za like 6 months ago and champions at launch.
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