Category: Game Balance/Mechanics Questions

VikingBoyBilly asks:

I got an idea to rebalance natures. Let’s take, say, a bold pokémon. The attack stat is reduced by 10%, minus 10% of the neutral defense stat. The defense stat is boosted by 10%, plus 10% of the neutral attack stat. What you get is a compound boost/debuff so the give and take is actually even (Like, if both attack and defense were 100 neutral, it would result in 80 attack and 120 defense). Of course, a stat can never be lower than 1.

Ehhhh… I think if you’re going to do this you should really commit to it and get rid of the flat 10% entirely (and maybe change the proportional part to 15% or even more).  It’s not a terrible idea, and it solves the problem of natures that sacrifice your unused attack stat being obviously the best choice (Alakazam, for instance, no longer gets very much out of sacrificing attack, and needs to sacrifice special defence to get a meaningful boost to speed or special attack). On the other hand, I think it’s significantly harder for new players to understand than the current system.  It also discourages using Pokémon as mixed attackers, which is unfortunate – a Pokémon that actually does have two high attack stats, like Infernape, can get a lot more out of its nature than most Pokémon do by focusing on just one attack stat, which seems contrary to what Game Freak actually want us to do with Pokémon like that.

VikingBoyBilly asks:

What if abilities were split into “traits” and “skills,” where “traits” are permanently stapled onto the species due to it being inherent to their physiology (stuff like levitate, iron barbs, liquid ooze, etc.) and “skills” being ones they have to learn and are limited so if they want another skill, they have to replace the old one? (stuff like technician, super luck, moxie, inner focus, etc.)

Seems legit.  It’s sightly awkward in that you wind up creating this major gameplay distinction between learned and inherent abilities that is based entirely on aesthetics (like, as far as I can tell there is no mechanical criterion that separates the two groups you’ve outlined).  Maybe at some point the developers actually want to have a Pokémon that can get Levitate but doesn’t have it automatically (the way Bronzong is now)?  Of course, you could just rule that things which are inherent “traits” for some Pokémon can be learned “skills” for others.  You also need a mechanism for learning skills (but that could be as simple as having them be learned on level-up like moves).

VikingBoyBilly asks:

If you were tasked to think of one idea to make Eevee completely overpowered and broken without evolving, what would you come up with?

…well, without thinking too hard about why we’re doing this, I’d probably give her an ability that sort of combines Conversion 2 with Protean – Eevee, the ultimate adapter, automatically shifts her type to gain resistance or (if possible) immunity to all incoming attacks.  That’s immunity to 8/18 types and resistance to everything else.  Slap an Eviolite on that and it’ll survive damn near anything, up to and including Primal Kyogre’s Origin Pulse.  Of course, I don’t exactly know what you’d do with Eevee at that point other than maybe Baton Pass some Curses, but you said “one idea” so that’ll have to do.

Anonymous asks:

How do you feel about the idea of Game Freak making more dramatic changes to rebalance weaker Pokemon? For example, switching Flareon’s Special Attack with HP or Speed, and giving it access to Earthquake? I know they don’t do this, but should they?

I don’t think it’s unreasonable.  I mean, I’ve sort of given up caring about game balance in Pokémon, because – in my opinion, at least – Mega Rayquaza pretty much puts it beyond doubt that Game Freak certainly doesn’t care, and doesn’t regard a balanced competitive metagame as a significant goal of what they’re doing.  More importantly, I suspect that, given the sheer number of Pokémon we have now (or, good heavens, the number we will have by the end of the year – have they announced a number?  No, don’t tell me, I don’t even want to know), even a more aggressive balancing strategy like what you’re suggesting would probably not be sufficient.  There aren’t all that many viable roles a Pokémon can fill on a team (special/physical sweeper, Rapid Spin support, tank, pivot, wall, etc), and when you have 700+ of the damn things, it’s sort of inevitable that some will outstrip others at pretty much everything.  On top of that, some Pokémon that are bad on their own somehow become good when partnered with certain others through the strange alchemy of team-building.  So in short, I don’t think it’s a bad idea, I certainly don’t think it would hurt, and some of the really unfortunate Pokémon like Wigglytuff or Ariados could do with just having some big numbers slapped on them, but I’m also not convinced it would actually solve anything in the long term.

Anonymous asks:

Would Regigigas be more usable if instead of Slow Start, it began with very low Attack and Speed, and very high Defense and Special Defense- but every turn, the offensive stats go up +1 and defensive go down -1?

I feel like the answer is probably “no,” because I think with a set-up like that you run into the Darmanitan problem, where you have one Pokémon with two radically different strategies and it’s impossible to commit your moveset and EV spread entirely to one or the other.  Also, part of the problem with Slow Start is that the clock resets when you switch out, and in a game between two human players it’s actually not all that easy to guarantee that Regigigas will be able to stay in play without being killed for long enough to turn off his ability – this way of doing Slow Start has the same difficulty.  You can’t really play defensive because you get weaker the longer you stay in, and you can’t really play offensive because it takes you so damn long to set up.

Anonymous asks:

Going off the post about giving natures secondary effects, wouldn’t adding those effect make them too similar to abilities?

Well part of the premise of that whole discussion was that I rather liked the idea of having multiple abilities anyway, so I don’t know if that really matters to me.  Just use the natures for low-key and general bonuses, and make abilities more powerful and specific.

Anonymous asks:

How do you feel about reworking natures entirely? Half of the natures are useless (neutrals and – Defense / -Sp Def). Some examples would be Hasty – Slower Pokemon take 10% more damage from the user. Brave – Critical Hit damage increases by 50%. Bold – Both defenses increase by 15% before the user attacks. Aggressive – Both Attacks increase by 20% if the user was attacked this turn. Certain Pokemon would only have access to some natures too, like Shuckles can’t be Hasty.

Hmm.  So instead of just giving a flat bonus and penalty under all circumstances, each one confers a situational bonus?  I think I quite like that.  It’s less obvious which one is the “best” for any given Pokémon, it helps to avoid the situation we have now where there are some that are just clearly far more useful than others, and it reduces the number of individual Pokémon who just get thrown out without a second thought because (e.g.) Impish is a garbage nature for Alakazam.  My biggest concern is that I think it’d be tricky to come up with 25 of them and make them all roughly balanced (balanced enough so that for any given species there are at least five or six good choices that you can argue for).  Other suggestions: Modest gets larger bonuses from stat boosting moves; Impish gets an accuracy bonus for moves in the “status” category; Lonely gets bonuses to everything when it’s the last Pokémon standing on its team.

VikingBoyBilly asks:

What if pokémon could have 2 natures and/or 2 abilities? The neutral natures might actually get used if they have to be 2-dimensional, and get stats boosted by 20% for an extra nerf.

Hmm.  Well, multiple abilities (heck, why stop at two?) is an idea that I like a great deal in theory; I think it could be particularly interesting for combining very powerful and very strongly negative abilities on a single Pokémon (say, Truant and Sheer Force, or Speed Boost and Defeatist).  In practice I think you would have to run through almost every Pokémon that currently exists and give some careful consideration to how this kind of thing would affect their power levels.  Some Pokémon like Zubat just have two crappy abilities and kinda get dicked over by this; other Pokémon have two really insane abilities and become significantly more powerful – imagine Reuniclus with Magic Guard and Regenerator, Yanmega with Speed Boost and Tinted Lens, or (gods forbid) Excadrill with Sand Rush and Sand Force.  You’d need to be careful with it.

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VikingBoyBilly asks:

If you could add one or more new stats to the game, what would it be? (My first inclination is Luck, Accuracy and Evasion stats)

Well, I’ve talked about accuracy and evasion before here, and luck here, and my general inclination is that I don’t like any of them; I think the game is actually probably worse, not better, if you make those things into trainable stats.  I’m honestly not sure I would change anything unless I were rebuilding the entire battle system to function in a different way – like, I’ve vaguely toyed with the idea of having more of a 2D tactics-oriented system on an isometric or hexagonal grid, sort of like what Conquest has, and in that case you might, for instance, want separate stats for movement speed and initiative (for determining turn order).  Or you might ditch the idea of separate defence and special defence stats, and instead split HP into toughness and will, where low or zero will doesn’t actually knock a Pokémon out but does impose steadily worsening penalties.  There’s a lot of different things you could do that might be interesting, but I don’t think any of them would necessarily involve just slapping on an extra stat without reshuffling a bunch of other things; the basic system is pretty solid, I think.