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Lionhearted
I'd imagine that the interest for the little critters would be rather low on this forum, but I felt like doing a quick write up on how pokémon works... out of boredom mostly.

A little background.
With the release of Pokémon Diamond/Pearl and Platinum (Often refered to as generation 4, we're currently in gen 5 with gen 6 scheduled for October), the pokémon franchise received an unexpected surge of new interest as a new kind of pokémon player emerged; The competitive player.
A lot of gamers that normally wouldn't bat an eyelash towards the franchise was drawn in by the advanced mechanics and rewarding strategic gameplay that had developed since the franchise inception.
With the growing presence of online features and the internet maturing into the beast it is today communities focused on breeding, battling and competing started to emerge. Which puts us where we are today.

Part 1: The Pokémon.
A pokémon got a number of unique characteristics that determine the effectiveness it will have in battle, some of it is determined by the species (not all pokémon is created equal, I'll cover that later), some of it is determined of the pokémons "genes" and some of it by it's training, I'll go into each of these seperately.

Species: Currently there is around 650 different species of Pokémon (compared to the original 151) Each with unique characteristics. A pokémons specie determine it's type, ability and base stats.

Type: The type of a pokémon determines what weaknesses and resistances it possesses aswell as it's STAB (Same Type Attack Bonus) It's possible to have a pokémon with dual typing, giving it access to all of the resistances and weaknesses of both types aswell as double stab.
[ Spoiler ]

There's currently no dual-type moves.
Base power is the term used to describe the damage of an attack before stat bonuses are applied.

Stats: Each pokémon possesses, 6 stats determined by three variables, stats determines the effectiveness of a Pokémon in Battle.
These Variables are refered to as
Base stats, IV's (Individual Values) and EV's (Effort Values)

Base stat:
[ Spoiler ]

IV's
[ Spoiler ]

EV's
[ Spoiler ]


Natures
[ Spoiler ]


The Stats are as follow
[ Spoiler ]


Character limit already? I haven't even covered all of what makes a poké tick yet... I'll continue this later.
Lionhearted
Continued:

Abilities
[ Spoiler ]


Moves:
Each pokémon possess up to 4 attacks with various effect that are learnt through leveling up, breeding (known as egg moves) or special items known as TMs(technical machines) or HMs (Hidden machines) there's currently close to 900 moves within including effects such as:
[ Spoiler ]


Items:
Each pokémon can hold one item, providing them with a range of effects.
Everything from healing slightly, to increasing a stat at the expense of something else to inflincting a status on the wielder (this is useful with certain abilities)
Items is a major consideration for a pokémon to forfill it's role.

End of part 1, Part 2: The metagame.
Which I'll do tomorrow as I need to sleep.

I'm not going into breeding, because that's just... where shit gets really complex.
X-Kalibur
And this shows exactly why competitive Pokemon battling is effed up (and why netbattle was so popular). IVs and EVs being normalized or removed make way more sense for competitive gameplay, then focusing more on the individual pokemon and movesets rather than the annoyance of perfect raising.
_Pax._
.... just to tie this back into Shadowrun a wee bit: I can see a Pokemon-like AR game being popular in the Sixth World, especially among tweens and younger. You could even have the game looking at where you are, and assigning buffs/debuffs to various Types of critters/pets/whatever (using GPS mapping). smile.gif
CanRay
QUOTE (_Pax._ @ Jan 24 2013, 09:34 PM) *
.... just to tie this back into Shadowrun a wee bit: I can see a Pokemon-like AR game being popular in the Sixth World, especially among tweens and younger. You could even have the game looking at where you are, and assigning buffs/debuffs to various Types of critters/pets/whatever (using GPS mapping). smile.gif
Bah, they've all gone to MiracleShooter™.

I mean, hell, look at the upgrades in the software!
_Pax._
Just like WoW was never the only MMO, I'm pretty sure MiracleShooter is nto the only AR Matrix game. smile.gif
Lionhearted
QUOTE (X-Kalibur @ Jan 25 2013, 01:41 AM) *
And this shows exactly why competitive Pokemon battling is effed up (and why netbattle was so popular). IVs and EVs being normalized or removed make way more sense for competitive gameplay, then focusing more on the individual pokemon and movesets rather than the annoyance of perfect raising.

Yes IV's can be a bit of a pain, if they reduced the numbers from 1-31, to say... 1-10 getting good pokémon wouldn't be a statistical nightmare. I'm fine with EV's should be easier ways to track them and a way to reset them although.
For reference my 30/31/31/31/31/31 Ninetales with drought and modest nature took 28 generations of 10 eggs a piece to breed... and I got lucky.
Legendaries should come prepacked with perfect IV's although.
QUOTE (_Pax._ @ Jan 25 2013, 02:34 AM) *
.... just to tie this back into Shadowrun a wee bit: I can see a Pokemon-like AR game being popular in the Sixth World, especially among tweens and younger. You could even have the game looking at where you are, and assigning buffs/debuffs to various Types of critters/pets/whatever (using GPS mapping). smile.gif

They're already doing this, there's talks about expanding the use of the DS streetpass feature... Knowing big N it won't be long before we take literal walks with pokémons having real world random events/encounters/battle challenges... If you live in Japan where people actually carry DSes on the street.
X-Kalibur
What I'd really like to see is certain types getting a set IV value and being lessend (halved, most likely) when on a dual type. In this way the IV is determined by your type combination instead of "I need to farm only rattatas to get the fastest pokemon X I can". EVs are the same really, give them a set value based on breed. Then the metagame isn't about breeding your pokemon for 10 generations and hoping you get lucky just so you get 1 potentially perfect pokemon. Now do it for all of them and level them all to 99 and you're ready for real competitive fights!...

Yawn. I'd rather go farm raids in WoW... and I can't stand doing that.
Lionhearted
IV's: Genes
That would make every pokémon exactly the same genetically, good for competitive play, but a loss for the diversity and the fun of the lottery that is breeding, a lot of average players enjoys that aspect. (most serious traders uses RNG abuses to produce desired stats)

EV's : Training.
No, no, no. Even if EV training is obscure and tedious EV's exist for a very good reason, they allow you specialise!
Here's two Gliscors, both have exactly the same IV's.
One is Adamant nature (+Att, -SpA) with 252 EV's in attack and speed and 4 EV's in HP.

The other is a Impish nature (+Def, -SpA) with 252 EV's in HP and Defense and 4 in either speed or SpD

What's the difference?
Both are completely viable builds, but one is a fast attacker and one is either a bulky set-up attacker, a staller or a physical wall.

With static EV's you'd make that variety impossible, and it's more like 30 rattatas with a power anklet, 15 with pokérus.
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