Rufus (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
badass_tiger) wrote2023-02-20 05:28 pm
badass_tiger) wrote2023-02-20 05:28 pm
Entry tags:
F50 3: Competitive Pokemon's biggest hurdle
Anyone else find it funny that Wolfe says things like 'In singles blah blah blah but in competitive Pokemon, it's different', implying that singles doesn't count as competitive Pokemon?
I've been playing Unite lately and one thing that strikes me is how simple it is to get into it. All I had to do was spend currency to pick up my Pokemon of choice and I was instantly able to hit the field. There are some customisable options that require materials, such as items which are purchasable and upgradable, and emblems, which need to be collected through gacha or rewards or whatever, but once you have collected these items, you can equip them onto other Pokemon without unequipping them or upgrading them again or anything.
You can't do that in VGC. Once you decide on what you want to do, you have to catch or breed those Pokemon, train them up, then equip their items. Decided on a new team, or maybe just want to tweak some EVs? Well off you go repeating that process, e.g. clearing EVs before applying them again. Of course you can use the same Pokemon in multiple teams once you've EV-trained them, but if you want to change anything about them, most notably EVs, it's a whole process.
It only makes sense that people would cheat to get their Pokemon. The entire process is ridiculous! And it doesn't hurt anyone to cheat. The advantage you gain is negligible. Pokemon has been doing their best to make the process as painless as possible, but they're very much still not there. I've been feeling that more than ever this generation. It's so different from any other esport and that really hurts its viability as a competitive game, because it's so difficult to get into. With other games, you pick your character(s) and get started. With Pokemon, it's a multi-step process that never stops.
In Unite, the emblem system is ... something I don't fully understand just yet, but one of their effects is that they change Pokemon's stats slightly. EV training is definitely one of the biggest hurdles of competitive Pokemon. You either look for Pokemon to battle to EV train or you buy vitamins, which are costly, and still require grinding in the sense of collecting the cash for it. What if, in Pokemon, there was a system similar to emblems? Let's say you can buy premade emblems which max out a stat, but you can also buy empty emblems which you can fill out yourself with custom EV spreads. That way, you can just switch emblems around when you decide on a new Pokemon. Or maybe if you have an emblem, you can assign multiple Pokemon to it, so you only need to obtain emblems of those EV spreads once. And you can still EV train Pokemon the traditional way, but attaching an emblem overrides their 'natural' EVs so you can easily attach emblems to your in-game team without clearing their EVs.
I don't think Pokemon will ever make such a simple system, or at least make that system without still requiring extensive grinding. Maybe you need to grind a lot of currency to purchase maxed emblems, or load EVs by EV training the traditional way. But I think it would still be helpful to have a system that makes EV training easier to comprehend.
There's way more issues than just this in competitive Pokemon's accessibility, such as the fact that EVs are so hidden. You can play Pokemon for 30 years (quite soon) without ever knowing about IVs and EVs. That's again something that doesn't really exist in other esport games. Maybe this will be part 1 of me suggesting changes to make competitive Pokemon more accessible that will never be implemented!
I've been playing Unite lately and one thing that strikes me is how simple it is to get into it. All I had to do was spend currency to pick up my Pokemon of choice and I was instantly able to hit the field. There are some customisable options that require materials, such as items which are purchasable and upgradable, and emblems, which need to be collected through gacha or rewards or whatever, but once you have collected these items, you can equip them onto other Pokemon without unequipping them or upgrading them again or anything.
You can't do that in VGC. Once you decide on what you want to do, you have to catch or breed those Pokemon, train them up, then equip their items. Decided on a new team, or maybe just want to tweak some EVs? Well off you go repeating that process, e.g. clearing EVs before applying them again. Of course you can use the same Pokemon in multiple teams once you've EV-trained them, but if you want to change anything about them, most notably EVs, it's a whole process.
It only makes sense that people would cheat to get their Pokemon. The entire process is ridiculous! And it doesn't hurt anyone to cheat. The advantage you gain is negligible. Pokemon has been doing their best to make the process as painless as possible, but they're very much still not there. I've been feeling that more than ever this generation. It's so different from any other esport and that really hurts its viability as a competitive game, because it's so difficult to get into. With other games, you pick your character(s) and get started. With Pokemon, it's a multi-step process that never stops.
In Unite, the emblem system is ... something I don't fully understand just yet, but one of their effects is that they change Pokemon's stats slightly. EV training is definitely one of the biggest hurdles of competitive Pokemon. You either look for Pokemon to battle to EV train or you buy vitamins, which are costly, and still require grinding in the sense of collecting the cash for it. What if, in Pokemon, there was a system similar to emblems? Let's say you can buy premade emblems which max out a stat, but you can also buy empty emblems which you can fill out yourself with custom EV spreads. That way, you can just switch emblems around when you decide on a new Pokemon. Or maybe if you have an emblem, you can assign multiple Pokemon to it, so you only need to obtain emblems of those EV spreads once. And you can still EV train Pokemon the traditional way, but attaching an emblem overrides their 'natural' EVs so you can easily attach emblems to your in-game team without clearing their EVs.
I don't think Pokemon will ever make such a simple system, or at least make that system without still requiring extensive grinding. Maybe you need to grind a lot of currency to purchase maxed emblems, or load EVs by EV training the traditional way. But I think it would still be helpful to have a system that makes EV training easier to comprehend.
There's way more issues than just this in competitive Pokemon's accessibility, such as the fact that EVs are so hidden. You can play Pokemon for 30 years (quite soon) without ever knowing about IVs and EVs. That's again something that doesn't really exist in other esport games. Maybe this will be part 1 of me suggesting changes to make competitive Pokemon more accessible that will never be implemented!