badass_tiger | F50 2: The (forced?) bottle cap philosophy

Titling this blog like a bad YouTube video essay because clickbait is what gets the kids going these days ✌️

I don't really remember what my initial reaction to bottle caps was. I might have been a little worried that it diminished the value of breeding - not the value to other people, but in making breeding feel unnecessary to myself - but I was glad I wouldn't have to worry about SRing legendary Pokemon anymore. Although mints didn't exist in gen 7 yet so I still never got around to SRing any of the legendaries until SWSH because I couldn't be bothered setting up a Synchronize Pokemon (and I had no use for legendary Pokemon at that point anyway).

But it became apparent almost immediately after SM's release that bottle caps wouldn't reduce the value of breeding or RNGing in any sense, because humans tend to be very traditionalist, and a lot of people preferred 'natural' IVs to hyper training - perhaps not even 'prefer', but rejected hyper training. Obviously pretty much all of these people are collectors, so it doesn't matter because hyper training maintains its usefulness for the people who need it, namely the competitive battlers. Besides which, bottle capping had a very high restriction in the fact that a Pokemon needs to be at max level to undergo hyper training. Since battling - the only type of battling that matters - takes place at level 50, and level 50 is, at best, 20% of the experience required to reach level 100 (at worst, it's 9%), this is such an absurdly high threshold that breeding maintains a very high value. And that's good ... I guess? On the whole, I don't really see the downside to it. Hyper training remains something you do only if you have to (especially because gen 7 continues to make levelling an annoying grind).

Gen 8 doesn't change much about this except to make it easier - so, so much easier - for Pokemon to reach level 100, so it becomes rather more feasible. It also added everything else to make pretty much any Pokemon able to be adjusted into a competitive spread. A change that feels natural now, but was quite revolutionary when it took place.

Then gen 9 comes along, and while it hasn't, strictly speaking, changed much, it has changed some things very fundamentally. When it comes to IVs, these are the two things that it has changed which puts everything on its head:

Extra menuing in breeding
Reducing the level requirement for hyper training to 50.

Sounds like minor changes to look at, but let's go through it. First, an extra step in breeding: activating egg power 2. I guess they removed the Oval Charm in favour of this, which is ... bonkers, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Basically, egg obtaining hatching becomes much slower without egg power 2, so it's a necessity. Second, all eggs automatically go to your PC, so you need to shuffle your Pokemon around to pick them up. People make other complaints, but I think those are the only ones that matter. While they're minor things, what they do is that they make breeding a faff in a way that's positively steps behind what breeding was even 15 years ago in XY. It makes it so that it's no longer a matter of popping two Pokemon into the Daycare and cycling around for half an hour until the stars align, and there's no rhythm to it.

While it's truly not terrible (hey, breeding in earlier generations was way worse), it just feels so backwards after how SWSH streamlined breeding to the point that it's absolutely effortless. Although I must say at this point that this is entirely my opinion. Plenty of people like it and feel it an improvement to SWSH.

The second thing is much more straightforward, and a much more objectively positive change. Again, level 50 is miles less than level 100. The other thing, which I don't think changes things that much but is an added improvement, is how easy bottle caps and mints are to obtain in this game. They drop from raids and I've never had to buy a mint in this game. (I've had to buy bottle caps, but only because I make a habit of collecting BR Pokemon.)

Put all these things together, and you get what feels like an actual push towards hyper training. I'm not saying that Game Freak made breeding inconvenient on purpose, mind you. But what it feels like is, the opinion was that breeding is for shiny hunting Pokemon that you can't find in the overworld, and then you pick up with hyper training and associated things from there.

For my part, I've never minded hyper training at all. I don't think the 'Hyper trained!' label is ugly or anything. I always bred in SWSH because I liked it. So when I don't like breeding as much, I have no issue with turning to hyper training. And that's what I want to say in this entry. I have now been successfully pushed into hyper training by Game Freak. The only time I use breeding now is when I need specific IVs (generally 0, of course), and even then, mostly for shiny breeding 0 IVs, because 0 IVs aren't a huge pain to catch for either. And I don't mind that.

That's it. Lots of people do mind, but I'm not one of them.