Amethyst

I think there's a difference between changing teams to account for a new generation of Pokemon being available vs teams changing based on a setting in game in the same release... Heck, a better example would be teams changing between versions without a new generation. I'm not above retcons, but when leaders change teams between modes I feel like that much more transparently becomes about the gameplay rather than a selection of the leaders' choice in Pokemon. And yes, characters already use more than 6 mons througout the game as is, that's true. But given that we're not necessarily lacking options to increase the difficulty of fights without changing species, doing so and losing one the most significant, consistent aspects of the experience across playthroughs would be a needless casualty. That said, I think you're also conflating issues with the gen 7 updates. While I'm sure it's not the case for everyone-- trainers needed to get gen 7 Pokemon. And the Aster and Eclipse fight, for instance, needed to be nerfed. Those things could have happened individually, but it was a necessity in both cases. Even now that fight is still a difficulty spike for average/new players. I hear you in your saying you miss that challenge though and-- great. We'll have you covered. Frankly us not using Redux seems like it should be a win for you since then you just get to pick and choose which flavor of bonus difficulty you want. fuckin' MOOD (worth it tho)

frankly i don't care about legendaries either, but others do, and nintendo tends to hit games right at their completion through the champion (see: uranium, prism). in order to mitigate risks and make sure we can finish, we're doing it all at once. some other factors but that's the biggest.

G R E E T I N G S

guys you're all wrong my cat's cousin actually is actually the game's executive producer for the game and he said that sapphira's ace is actually barney dinosaur

interesting, this is basically the error that was supposed to be fixed, and someone else said it was... just in case, have you tried clearing your cookies/cache for this site?

it has been 15 years since i started running a website and i still have not figured out how to spell maintenance without spellcheck's help this weekend's site maintenen-- maintnec-- mainten.. you know what? fuck it. i quit. for the rest of the post, i'm replacing the word "maintenacnencne" with "flatulence." this weekend's site flatulence was necessitated because the evil overlords* who produce the site's forum software kindly informed me that if i wanted to fix literally anything on the site ever i would have to basically yeet the entire server and start over because the old server's equivalent-of-an operating system was incompatible with their product. this is probably all fine and well but i really would like to have been told that at any point before installing said system three years ago and spending no small number hours trying to troubleshoot problems that apparently and inherently had solution sigh anyway this hell flatulence was basically us rebuilding an entirely new server from scratching and taking the old site over and just... pushing it onto the new one. if you can't tell, this was a very painful flatulence for us, and we would prefer not to talk about that part of it too much. *they're not actually evil im just mad and it's more fun to say that way so, while you won't actually notice a whole lot of new changes as a result of the flatulence, there are a handful of things that we have reason to believe have been fixed. and i'm going to say this, and i say this knowing how much i jinx myself, because the second i post this this accursed hellsite will almost certainly choose one of these things or something brand new and annoying to break out of the sheer amount of spite it surely houses in its hallowed scripts nevertheless we are hoping our flatulencehas has fixed the following permanently: log-ins throwing an error message the bug that preventing reactions from working on the dev blog the bug causing users to be logged out when visiting the dev blog and other places maybe some other random things? eh? ehhh??? unfortunately, the flatulence is not without some collateral damage. for instance, you'll notice that some of the URLs of the site have changed. cass and i have had a hard fight and have done our best to make sure that external links to the site will be preserved, and to my knowledge we've done a good job of that! but this is a big site. if you find links pointing to the site or places in it that are newly broken, please let us know! there's a decent chance we can do something about it. another casualty of the flatulence, unfortunately, is Pokemon Showdown. while we could technically restore it, it would not be a small amount of work and changing IP addresses means we'd have to get Smogon involved on that too. given that our once-bustling server had been reduced to a bit of a ghost town anyway, and was not being properly updated or moderated, we have made the decision to retire it. sorry to the like, two or three people who still used it-- this wasn't planned, but it was probably inevitable. we've also taken the opportunity to do some other improvements during the flatulence. most of them are small and hardly worth mentioning, but you will notice that to compliment our now better functioning react system, the options have changed a bit. the old style of emojis have been phased out in favor of the discord-style ones the site already uses, meaning you can now at people's posts. and that's what's really important, i think. we've also updated the site's home page-- did you know we had a home page? i sure didn't-- with a handful of quick links for both reborn and rejuvenation, so hopefully new users and returning people alike can get around a bit quicker. maybe someone will even read the FAQ. ...yeah i know, that's silly. that's about it though. if you haven't already checked the newly-repaired dev blog, i suggest you do so! but all that said and done, i will officially draw this long, winding, nightmarish flatulence to a close. thanks, everyone, for bearing with us during it.

no that's my job

actually i lied budew did it

cant even speak english that's how little time i have

sorry i was trying to keep it a secret so it'd be a surprise anyway no i barely have time to make one fangame let alone too, save me ;~;

yeah i use graphics gale, and like, i'm still actively aware that there's a bunch of different outline colors in GG, since i'm usually copy-pasting a bunch of stuff from other different tilesets but it's not necessarily worth fixing each and everything but then later i regret it so even if you're not upset i am primarily by the unavoidable state of entropy that exists simply due to the passage of time h

you're valid and i'm so sorry for everything (although i would never want to actually use pure black since transparency eats that sometimes)

hey, glad to see you're back at it! sorry for kind of immediately undercutting your new route with a surprise release. whoops. i've gone ahead and removed nature power from that venusaur; also guaranteed intimidate on torracat. frankly the missing ability in that fight looks like an oversight anyway. battle speed will also be the death of me.

yeah so this was completely accidental. i have no idea how but somehow the multiple save slot system changed the way that information saves and fixed the glitch. it's really nice for something to get accidentally fixed rather than accidentally broken, for once. that said, i have no idea if this will negatively impact other parts of the game so please let me know if that turns out to be the case-- not that i'd know what to do with it offhand, but still...

maybe the real lock was on the friendships we nominated along the way

Comeback of the Year @Cool Girl Carmen Sandiego @Lost Lore Sugarpop Sunbeam @Starry Knight Most Helpful Content Creator @Vinnie @Waynolt Archbishop of Banterbury @Jelly Biggest Grumpy of the Year @Commander @Maelstrom Pointedest Poindexter @andracass Hippest Himbo @Felix~ @Tacos @Jan Julia Wilde @Inuki Most Likely to Take Over The World @andracass Most Likely to Gigantamax @FraRPetO Most Likely to Get a Regional Variant @Jelly Most Likely to Start a Religious Cult @andracass Most Likely To Be Three Komalas in a Trench Coat @MintMan Most Likely to Die in the Last Episode of Reborn @Abyssreaper99 Most Likely to Die First in a Killing Game @Ice Most Likely to have a Debate with Themselves @Bearadactyl Prime Most Likely To Really Be Ferdinand von Aegir @Tacos Most Likely To Win Third Place @Hellscythe789 Most Likely to Never Give You Up @Starry Knight Award Award Award @Jelly @Felix~

it is limited to what we said, since we are basically just ripping specific things out of e19 and shoving them backwards into e18. we were limited in what could be properly tested without a full cycle. it just might! and credit for the wonderful aurora veil goes to @VulpesDraconis ! this is not a proper list and will also contain ones with very minor imperceptible fixes, but it will give you a rough idea: https://prnt.sc/qfj9nt https://prnt.sc/qfja2x

as a result of that last post, i also nominate godot for biggest grumpy

the format itself is the same, and the descripts are carried over from last year's topics, but there are new and some changed categories. limiting number of wins is something we discussed briefly and might look at in the future, although based on last year there were just a few people who won three awards each, not counting the staff categories, so i don't think it's a huge issue. at the least, we didn't want to make a hasty decision on it so we are trying again as is once more and will consider a limit next year

no cass is dorkiest dork

"epic" more like painful... anyway yeah the girafarig thing absolutely was that bug, and i think i noticed it with fern's switching as well too.... it hurts, but i'm just glad we found and fixed it regarding the ace thing, they used to not send in aces until last under any condition but as of e18 i think ??? we made it so that that is now a suggestion rather than a requirement for all battles that do not have a story-specific reason to hold the ace for last (i.e taka or zel defending a PULSE). so they're now discouraged from it, rather than forbidden. it is technically not optimal but i think in the average case it makes a more compelling conclusion to a battle if the final is their ace. as for having two aces, the AI already considers both an 'ace' and a 'second' and the second is also similarly discouraged from switching in earlier-- albeit less than the ace. that behaviour has been in place since we began our AI rework.